So Comes Ice After Fire
by Keleri
Summary: In her second year in Pokémon Ranger School, Moriko Sato gets the opportunity to finish the Gaiien League—and the opportunity to reconnect with a friend. At least there won't be any Demon Pokémon or Kaiju Pokémon around this time, right? (Uh oh.) - Sequel to Gods and Demons: ad terminos terrae - (Original Trainer & Fakemon story - check my profile for illustrations)
1. Windfall

**Author's Note:** This story is a sequel to _Gods and Demons: ad terminos terrae!_ (s/11960983/) Read that one first!

This is a fakemon and original region story—but I draw my fakemon and have various maps and illustrations for easy reference on my deviantart/tumblr **gaiienpokedex**.

* * *

I. Windfall

_Mixing _

_memory and desire, _

_Stirring _

_dull roots with spring rain._

_May 28__th__–June 7__th__, 130 CR (2__nd__ Year)_

Mossdeep Island was pleasant in the late spring, the steady wind off the sea making afternoons balmy rather than oppressive. The island had been covered in thick jungle, once, the volcanic prominence broadened by coral and mangroves. Pokémon and then humans had altered the landscape for their own uses, though today trees still dominated the skyline, the low-rise buildings not permitted to tower above them. The space center was the exception, hidden away behind the bluffs to spare residents the noise (and, perhaps, any malfunctions).

The university buildings on the south shore gleamed in the sun. The University of Hoenn at Mossdeep had a… reputation, and today many of the students' eyes were perhaps a little bleary and their gaits unsteady. But after a grueling month of written and practical examinations, they'd earned their celebrations.

The student rangers were not so at leisure: they had a year-round program, and training continued before the summer field schools began. On the beach south of the pokémon ranger faculty building, a young woman in student-ranger green with green hair and orange eyes was facing her opponent.

"Moonblast, Thana! Twist it!"

The oberant, a bipedal moth-like pokémon, spread her white wings wide, the red spots glowing as she powered up the fairy-type attack. A pink sphere formed in front of her, and she spun as she fired it off, the orb curving dizzyingly.

Her opponent, a sharpedo, a blue-and-white sharklike pokémon, dodged it by zigzagging rapidly in the shallow water of the bay… or so she thought, as she powered up her Waterfall attack and was hit in the back by the curveball. The part-dark-type was blasted onto the beach, coming to rest in a cloud of sand.

"Ugh, I give," the sharpedo muttered, turning to blue energy and streaming back into her pokéball.

"Sammy, you need to learn Poison Jab," their tyranitar teacher said to the defeated sharpedo. "Thana, don't get cocky. That was an easy matchup, but you need to be practicing techniques now, not going for the faint."

Thana's trainer was Moriko Sato, a second year ranger student; and she nodded agreement at the tyranitar's direction. That last bit was for her, too—she could've had Thana practice the curveball trajectory with a weaker move and kept Sammy in the game for longer. She couldn't see her opponent's face from across the beach—it was her classmate Suyin—but Moriko suspected she was going for her swellow, escalating the training session.

Moriko grimaced—well, she'd baited Suyin, but Moriko would toe the line for the rest of the battle. It was time to learn—

Overlapping beeping sounded; all the human ranger-professors pulled out their pokédexes, and Moriko checked hers as well, automatically, looking for the message. Nothing there: an alert for the teachers, not an emergency for everyone on the island.

"Shit," Ranger-Captain Rhea (retired) said. "Pack it up," she called to the students, human and pokémon. "You can continue in the battle courts if they're not booked, otherwise go read or something."

The faces of the other ranger-professors, too, were eloquent in their dismay. Suyin jogged up to Moriko, her feet sliding on the beach sand.

"What's going on?" Suyin wondered aloud, the two of them watching the ranger-professors pull out their flying pokémon and take off one by one, the birds and dragons and flying robots wheeling toward the ranger control center.

Moriko sighed. "I bet it's a giant pokémon."

x.x.x.x.x

Moriko was right; a live video site had the footage from a fishing boat in the tropics already, with the world's dumbest people in the comments crowing about how various politicians and celebrities would react. Moriko and the other student rangers crowded around someone's laptop in the cafeteria to watch.

It looked like a storm cloud, low to the sea and crackling with jade lightning, waterspouts twirling ahead of it. The boat heaved on the suddenly-hostile sea, and a huge remoraid hit the ship deck with a boom as the camera operator swore creatively in Hebrew. The recording cut out.

"It's a swarm giant," said Corene, class brain and perfect girl. She froze the video on the instant of the water-type falling, a purple blur with flailing fins. "The remoraid's big, but not enough to be the sole body. There're more of them and maybe a controller, too."

"An octillery?"

"Or a mantine," Moriko said aloud, and then regretted it as everyone turned to look at her, but she stared back placidly.

"That's right," Corene agreed. "Normal wild remoraid will convoy with mantine often, it's one of the better-studied cross-species pokémon associations."

"So what's the significance?" Sandy, another classmate, asked. "Why did all the profs freak out?"

"Swarms need far more wings to deal with them," Corene explained. "Normal kaiju pokémon are stupid, so you just need a few teams and some legendaries to whittle them down. A swarm, though? Still stupid, but so many moving parts. They'll need everyone who can sit a flying pokémon."

"Shit," someone said.

"It's not that bad! Honestly, the one a couple years ago was worse, they won't need elites and champions for this, just a lot of coordination."

Moriko carefully didn't say anything—she'd _been _at the one a couple years ago. And it had been bad. She didn't want anyone to know how bad; she'd almost died, and worse, she'd put other people in danger. She didn't need that talked about; she'd already had her turn in the rumor mill as the weird kid from Gaiien who'd survived its meatgrinder league.

Their professors confirmed everything Corene had surmised in a mass email a few hours later. Almost all of them were leaving for the Southern Ocean where the ancient pokémon had been spotted, along with fleets of active duty rangers from a dozen regions. The immediate consequence for the students was that their summer field school would be delayed—hopefully not significantly, or they'd have to cancel it entirely and throw everyone's program timelines into chaos.

Groups of students took the news differently. Many people immediately joined the other students for a post-exams bender, while others loaded up their bags and headed to the mainland for sightseeing or gym challenges or both. Suyin and Sandy invited Moriko to come with them to Shoal Cave and do some diving.

Moriko found herself pulled further afield despite the invitations: thinking about the events two years ago in Gaiien—the kaiju whiscash, the hybrids—had set her reminiscing about everything else that had happened that summer. Matt. Russ. Linden.

Rufus.

Rufus, her starter pokémon, the little volcalf who'd come home with her one summer's day, who'd grown into a fearsome oxhaust—

Who she had left behind.

Who had left her.

Most people used pokéballs to contain and protect pokémon, but Moriko had discovered that she was capable of another, older method that summer: ensoulment, the pokémon soul disappearing into the human's, protected and shielded and able to draw on their energy, and the human able to inhabit the pokémon the same way.

They'd been nearly invincible, huge and covered in metal armor, the link allowing them to mega evolve and stand toe-to-toe with a legendary demon—until it had done… something, splitting them apart, and left them both utterly vulnerable.

And somehow even that hadn't been the worst moment for Rufus, that defeat—it had been the ensoulment. Sharing Moriko's mind and memories had been… wrong. Awful.

He hadn't been able to handle it. And he'd left her.

Rightly. For forcing him into it. That was her crime to live with.

Russ, once her only human friend, had left her too. And Matt—a chirpy and sarcastic man she'd met only that summer, but with whom she'd been drawn into the terrible intimacy of disaster—what _was_ Matt doing? He was in Johto, going through that university's pokémon ranger program, their hard-won friendship reduced to terse IM exchanges. There were only so many times she could message him and get a one-word reply. But another of her friends was always ready to chat.

**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: moriko did u hear  
**MSato10**: about what  
**MSato10**: oh the daikaiju  
**MSato10**: yeah field school is delayed :P whee  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: aw shiet  
**MSato10**: they sent all our teachers after it, so  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: what r u gonna do  
**MSato10**: get drunk like everyone else, I guess  
**MSato10**: no, I should go get another badge actually  
**MSato10**: my program advisor was giving me heck for not having the S-tier license  
**MSato10**: it's not ~actually~ a requirement but it looks bad  
**MSato10**: also I got badge 6 and 7 for ~services to the gym~ so  
**MSato10**: I should really get like three more to be honest  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: MORIOK OMG  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: MORIKO  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: MORIKO  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: LETS GO BACK 2 GAIIEN  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: GET TEH 8TH BADGE  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: ITLL BE AMAZING PLS SAY YES  
**MSato10**: lol I don't know  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: moriko OGMZZZZZZZZZZZ pls!1!1  
**MSato10**: don't you have school  
**MSato10**: it's May, you aren't even done regular classes  
**MSato10**: shrimp  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: just wait a lil longer  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: pls  
**MSato10**: I don't know how long the daikaiju will take or when field school will start  
**MSato10**: anyway I should just fight Tate and Liza or whoever, but  
**MSato10**: actually  
**MSato10**: actually that would be kind of cool to finish Gaiien  
**MSato10**: but it's ice  
**MSato10**: I should have Rufus with me  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: whos rufus again  
**MSato10**: my oxhaust  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: RIGHT sry  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: ye u want him for ice  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: morikooooooooo  
**MSato10**: I don't know if he'll even come though  
**MSato10**: I hurt him by making him mega evolve that time  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: oh :'(  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: moriko pls  
**MSato10**: I'm just going to go to see Rufus and then see what happens after that  
**MSato10**: I'll come back here and we can fight Wallace instead  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: dont distract me  
**Xx_MeTeOrMaSh_xX**: that sounds pretty good tho

x.x.x.x.x

Moriko planned at the gym—the human gym. She and her classmates weight trained to keep up with the ranger fitness requirements, Unovan dance music thumping as she hefted dumbells and her classmate Kelly deadlifted 150 kg to cheering.

She felt a momentum, an eagerness building the more she thought about it. She'd withstood more than a few pursed lips and lifted eyebrows as advisors had seen her record with only seven badges, for all that they were from savage Gaiien. All her peers were S-tier trainers—or more; Corene was a triple-S trainer—and therefore senior trainers with the rights and responsibilities that title implied.

It would be strange if she was a graduate ranger without that rank. She'd meant to pick up a couple Hoenn badges, but first year had been a caffeine-fueled blur of desperately adjusting to university life with little respite before second year was soon underway. Hell, she only had _this_ break because a daikaiju, a natural disaster in the form of a pokémon, had decided to strike.

It was an opportunity.

She headed back to her dorm. She needed her bags, pokémon supplies—she could stock up in Slateport, prices were usually good there—she could take the ferry there and then make the transfer to a ship going to Port Littoral—hell, she could fly, save some time—she needed to tell—she needed to _ask_—

"Moriko!"

She turned on the walkway; it was one of the pokémon instructors, Ganny the emboar, a bipedal boar and jovial presence in the fire-type techniques class. Tarahn, her raigar, a cougar-like pokémon with a jester's cap and yellow-and-purple motley fur, was following alongside him.

"Ganny! What can I do for you? What's up, Tarahn?"

Ganny slapped hands with her. "Good to see you, young Morko. Young Tarahn here has been telling me about some of your adventures in Gaiien, and your next set of plans too—I believe I might be of service."

Moriko looked between the emboar and Tarahn. "Oh? How so?"

The bells on the raigar's tail jangled discordantly as he lashed it. "We need some help. To get Rufus back."

A sick feeling bubbled up under Moriko's sternum. "You don't think he'll want to come with us?"

"Well, he… you… Moriko, you hurt him!" Tarahn said all at once, eyes dilated. "That's why he left! That's why he won't come back!"

Ganny looked at them uneasily; Moriko felt heavy, drained, like she was in a Gravity field.

"You're right," she croaked. "I'm sorry."

Rufus had been Tarahn's buddy too, the two pokémon waiting and waiting for her to finish school, and she'd given them barely three months of a promised journey before racing off to school again.

Tarahn batted at her with his paw. "It's okay, Moriko. We just. He needs a reason to come with us. I've heard about the kind of place he's at, it's a place where pokémon can work and get a lot of energy, right? But it's lazy there," Tarahn said, a cunning light in his purple eyes. "They don't battle so much, just like, fun battling. Here they teach you _secrets_.

"So… that's why we need Ganny. He's going to make Rufus see why it's so good here."

Yes. Ranger school educated the human as well as their pokémon, teaching them battling and specialized techniques. They needed to be able to use moves precisely and accurately, to know the correct move for the correct situation, to perform feats of energy manipulation—and to save energy during drawn-out fights against ancient pokémon. Next year they'd learn trick moves and cheap shots to disable dangerous wild pokémon and ronin, and group moves far more powerful than even the z-moves and limit breaks that single pokémon could accomplish.

"If you don't want him—" Tarahn began.

"No! No, I do. Thank you, Ganny," Moriko said sincerely, clasping the emboar's hand. "Thank you, Tarahn. This is a great plan. You were thinking this time, and I wasn't."

Tarahn's expression was beaming. "Of course I was. I'm the brains of this outfit, remember?"

"And if your Rufus does not come back… well, you have a friend for the ice-type gym. Yes?" Ganny added conspiratorially, the flames on his shoulders flaring.

x.x.x.x.x

Moriko felt strange seeing Port Littoral again.

The fast ship brought them smoothly into the passenger docks. It was strange seeing it from this side, returning from the sea, instead of looking out eagerly from the beach or the cliffs. She'd lived there starting at age eight, and by eighteen had been utterly ready to leave, straining to.

She didn't miss it.

She tossed Liona's pokéball down; Liona was a nigriff, a griffin in black and burgundy, and eager to spread her wings. They flew over the city to Prof. Willow's lab, rising on the swells of hot air.

It didn't look any different. Prof. Willow's lab had looked nearly the same when she'd received Rufus as her starter as a ten-year-old. Moriko was pretty certain her office had had that same withered potted plant on top of the same stack of articles the last time she'd been here, two years ago.

The lab smelled of nothing in particular, some mixture of cleaning products and eau de grad student, but as soon as it hit her, Moriko was transported through time, memory flashing bright and quick and sharp as knives. And she thought of Rufus clattering up to her for the first time, a bright-eyed little calf in orange and cream with red hooves, there at her side through everything until suddenly he wasn't.

That was on her. She'd assumed… Ensoulment had worked so well, suddenly, accidentally, with Vleridin the mooskeg, mere days after capture. Of course it would work with her starter pokémon. Right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Prof. Willow was her usual self: masses of wavy blonde hair; lavender blouse; glasses and lab coat that pokémon professors were mandated by law to wear. She hugged Moriko and grilled her on her classes, filling her in on the fates of various students and starter trainers as they strolled around the grounds.

She didn't mention Moriko's family.

"Was there anything in particular you wanted to do while you're here?" Prof. Willow asked her.

"I wanted to see Rufus again. Is he around?"

"Of course! He's actually at the smelter next to the Tsovsko ore body. You can get there flying south a couple days or take the train," Prof. Willow said. She called up the map on her pokédex and sent the location to Moriko's.

She nodded. "Has he been… well?"

"No complaints that I've heard of. Fire- and steel-types _really_ like it there unless there's some kind of personal problem or bullying that can't get resolved." Prof. Willow grinned. "_Lots_ of energy."

Moriko felt her stomach sink at that. Tarahn was right; it was a rich energy node that attracted pokémon, wild or not, sometimes more than battling with a trainer. "Thanks, Professor," she said instead. "I was worried about him."

"Are you hoping to re-recruit him?"

Moriko nodded, feeling like she'd been caught. "…Should I?" she heard herself ask.

Prof. Willow looked at her seriously. "It doesn't hurt to try. And I know you'll respect his decision if it's a no."

She would. She hoped she could handle it.

x.x.x.x.x

Pokémon fed on energy, whether from battling, or the environment, or the concentrations found in berries, evolution stones, or rare candy. And… sometimes on each other. Or humans.

Battling was the best way, pokémon absorbing the energy from enemy attacks, and establishing a link with a trusted trainer. But a rich environmental source was nearly as good and required far less effort; they were fiercely fought over by the pokémon who held them in their territories. Human activities had invented new sources: mines, power plants, server farms, bioreactors—and as pokémon gathered near them, humans had realized how to use them to their benefit.

The mine was nearly invisible, the topsoil preserved while ground- and rock-type pokémon hauled ore out from under it. Huge, noisy, dusty machinery processed the ore, the racks and conveyors leading inside to the smelter. Inside, the raw material was fed into furnaces, and a continuous roaring filled the space. All around pokémon were helping the human workers, who were anonymous in shiny protective gear; a legendary pokémon, a heatran, clambered out of a furnace covered in slag, while a moltres fed burning air into it. Prof. Willow hadn't been exaggerating; legendary pokémon needed a prodigious amount of energy, and this site supported two of them or more.

Several flame minotaur oxhaust, including a white-and-black color variant, were studying the red-hot steel bars the machinery was producing, smelling and tasting them and relaying observations back to the humans at their control panels. Another, smaller heatran joined them, stumping up into the melt chamber to roll beads of unthinkably hot molten metal between its claws.

Moriko kept walking, shaking her head at her tour guide; none of those oxhaust were Rufus. Further down where the steel was being finished, though, she spotted him leaving.

"Rufus! Ru! Hey!" she called to him, catching up.

He turned. He was bigger, more muscled than the newly evolved oxhaust he'd been during their journey, his armor covered in new scorches and scuff marks. His eyes lit up as he saw her, and then fell, and his body scrunched into an uncomfortable posture while his friends, another oxhaust and a lucario, hooted and teased him.

"Who's this, Led? You cheating on me?" the other oxhaust was saying, laughing.

"Hey, Moriko," Rufus murmured.

"Hey Rufus!" Moriko said, forging ahead. "Who are your friends?"

"You can call me Bessemer, and this is Moly," the other oxhaust said, indicating itself and the lucario. "You know our boy?"

"He was my—I trained him for a while. I've been going to school in Hoenn, wanted to see him again," Moriko said, trying to match the pokémon's casual tone.

"Ooh, you gonna go battle again, Led?" Moly, the lucario, asked him. "You sure you remember how?"

Bessemer slapped Rufus on the butt with a resounding clang. "See you later, hot stuff!"

Rufus shuffled over to her as the other two left. Something about the way he was walking suggested a mix of pride and embarrassment.

"Is Hot Stuff your new nickname?" she teased him.

"No, it's Ledeburite here," Rufus said to his feet, balling his armor-clad fists over and over.

Moriko sensed this was getting off to a weird start. "Sorry, I didn't mean to cause you any trouble. Do you want me to call you Ledeburite?"

He exhaled, the furnaces in his body working. "No. My nickname with you is Rufus." Shyly, he put out a hand, and she took it, her hand completely dwarfed by his.

"Of course, Ru," she said softly. "How are you doing?"

"Good."

He'd never needed many words.

They went outside into the far cooler air. It was shading toward a long summer evening, the bugs sawing away in the grass and the noise of the mill a dull roar behind them.

Moriko threw down Tarahn's pokéball, and the raigar leapt onto Rufus's shoulders and started rubbing his face on Rufus's expressively. She suppressed a laugh as the oxhaust patted Tarahn, enduring his babbled entreaties.

"Rufus come back with us _please_—" Tarahn was saying.

Rufus froze. "Back where?" he asked.

Tarahn stopped too. "I mean—if you want—"

Rufus looked at Moriko. "What do you want? Why are you here?"

Moriko sighed. There was a lot of planning and intention rolling off of Tarahn's mind; best to start from the beginning. She extended her hands. "To say sorry. I'm so sorry for forcing you to join souls. There was no excuse."

Rufus picked up Tarahn and set him down on the ground.

"You woulda died. We both woulda died," he said finally. "I didn't stick to the plan." He shook himself, a cloud of smoke escaping from the array of vents and pipes on his back. "It was bad, though. I won't do it again."

"I'll never ask you to. I shouldn't have forced you. There could have been another way."

He nodded. "What else?"

"I was wondering... if you'd like to come with me, to challenge the ice gym. Can you get time off?"

Rufus watched her. "Did you come back for _me_? Or do you just want… a boost?"

Moriko flinched.

_Do you just want to use me_?

"I came here for you, Rufus. I couldn't go a day without thinking about you in Hoenn," Moriko said. Begged. "Do you… we could go do the ice gym to see if it's a good fit. Try it out. Or… do you want to stay with your new friends? …Tarahn misses you," she added.

Rufus sighed and extended a hand toward Tarahn, who reared up on his hind legs to rub his head on it over and over like a housecat. Finally he lifted the 80-kg raigar onto his shoulders again.

A silent moment, filled with everything that couldn't be said.

Rufus nodded. "I will go. To the ice gym." No promises for afterward. "Let me tell my boss."

Moriko followed him, her heart clenching with hurt and desperate hope.

The boss was the big heatran from the mill, dark red and studded with rusty iron. At Rufus's wave, she hopped down off the wall where she was crawling, spider-like despite her bulk, above a crucible of molten steel.

The two pokémon conferred for a moment before Rufus waved Moriko forward. The heatran looked at her with molten-metal eyes, her huge iron-banded jaw working as she crunched on lumps of iron and scrap steel.

"This boy does good work," the heatran said finally. "Why'd you leave him?"

Moriko's stomach twisted, and she glanced at Rufus. He was looking at the ground.

"I asked him to mega evolve without any preparation. I asked him to… ensoul me, at the same time," she admitted. "It was too much. He asked to leave, and my professor found a place for him here."

The heatran whistled, forcing hot steam out of a vent on her back. "That would do it. Listen, Led, ain't nothin' to be ashamed of there. It's a lot to fuse with a human. You go have some fun. If it's still too much, if you don't wanna be with her, you come on right back here. Alright?"

"Yeah. Thanks, Pele."

"Gittagoin'."

x.x.x.x.x

"Now, bring him out now," Tarahn whispered to Moriko before they were far outside the mill.

"It's a good idea?" Everything had gone weird—as she'd expected, but she was still floundering.

"Trust me," Tarahn said.

She sighed and took a Devon Corp-make pokéball off her belt, the design subtly different from the Silph Co. ones she'd grown up using.

"Rufus, I made a friend at school who you might like to meet," she called to him, and threw the ball.

Ganny the emboar appeared in red light on the path.

A little snort of steam came out of Rufus's nose. "Who are you?" he asked.

Ganny stretched his arms and exhaled, his spirit flames flaring. All at once he dropped his shoulder and rushed Rufus, striking the oxhaust with a resounding clang. Rufus grunted, throwing Ganny off, although he was left panting while the emboar seemed to pirouette to a new ready stance.

"I am Ganatumbra, Weyatonu's get," the emboar declared. "I am the fire master of Hoenn Ranger School. This is a rich, delicious place, young Rufus—and you have grown slow and soft here."

Moriko's stomach churned; she carefully stood at 90 degrees to both pokémon, not taking the trainer's position behind either. She felt Rufus's red eyes trace over her slowly and then back toward Ganny. Without saying a word, he shifted to a combat stance, low and heavy.

The earth rumbled and stone punched out of the ground, firing Ganny into the air. The emboar grunted, coming to a solid landing before firing off in a Flame Charge to close the gap between them. The following Hammer Arm attack crunched on Rufus' steel armor and he went flying.

Rufus skidded to a stop, his hooves carving deep runnels in the path. He snorted, smoke streaming out of his pipes, filling the field and obscuring vision in a Smokescreen.

Ganny laughed. "Does this work on your oxhaust friends, Moriko's Rufus?" the emboar called. His snout wiggled as he snorted. "It's funny fighting a fire-type heavier than me for once—ah!"

He dodged Rufus's Shoulder Rush out of the smoke cloud, and turned to follow him, something blue and blinding in his hands—

Rufus screamed, the Blowtorch—white-hot fire, searing—leaving a swathe of twisted metal across his back.

Tears came to Moriko's eyes; she was covering her mouth like a little kid.

"Ganny! That's enough!"

The emboar stood aside respectfully. "Had enough, Rufus?"

Rufus got to his feet, shaking, and straightened, towering over the old emboar, and snorted a thick stream of black smoke. "Just starting," he said, the fire-vents on his chest and legs opening with a roar.

Ganny grinned.

"Good! Good! That will be all," he said, patting Rufus's arm. "Your first lesson: remember your training! Where was your Counter attack? Where was your Flame Charge? You have been at play here for too long. There will be more lessons after you are healed. Come now."

A breathless moment, and finally Rufus's flames quieted. "Alright," he said.

Moriko thought she was going to throw up, but Tarahn trotted cheerfully after the two fire-types.

_Vleridin, was this okay?_

_Was _what_ okay?_ Moriko's ensouled mooskeg asked. _Ach, don't talk to me until you're further away from that damn mill._

x.x.x.x.x

The pokémon center at Tsovsko Village was rustic and homey, operated out of the inn-pub-general store as many of Gaiien's smallest hamlets did. After a heal for Rufus and a quick rejuvenation for the rest of Moriko's pokémon, she let them out into a broad park area behind the inn. Liona and Thana flew into the air, stretching their wings, while Tarahn and Vleridin settled in to watch the show as Ganny and Rufus began comparing techniques.

It seemed Rufus was unpracticed with some of his moves—maybe they hadn't factored into the casual battling Rufus had done with the other oxhaust or fire-types at the mill. Sometimes wild pokémon would prioritize showy or inaccurate moves over ones that were more combat effective, to impress underlings or potential mates better. Rufus was slow but steady and Ganny challenging and praising in equal measure, and the emboar drew out attacks like Flame Charge and Revenge that the oxhaust hadn't used in ages. Before long the dirt of the park was covered in scrapes and scorches.

"See? This is perfect," Tarahn said, tail twitching and immensely pleased with himself.

"You did it, kitty-cat. How did you know this would work so well?" she asked him, ruefully.

"I'm a genius."

Vleridin snorted. "In our classes, many of the students were like this. Their trainers had to finish their schooling, so they stayed on farms or with professors, and they grew lazy. The teachers had to remind them of their techniques before they could progress."

"I bet _you_ didn't need that," Moriko said, scratching the green-and-brown moose-like pokémon under an antler.

"Please, what do you think of me? Besides, you rushed us to Hoenn so quickly, what time was there to forget?"

That was true; Moriko had had to wait until she was done high school to go on her journey, and then she'd received a late acceptance to the University of Hoenn. Most kids in other regions would get a couple badges per summer until they were done at 14 or 15, then had to get serious about graduating from high school while their pokémon languished. Good trainers took the time to keep in practice, but it wasn't the same as the journey. Corene the perfect girl had actually finished all her courses by correspondence and then taken the remaining time to do multiple S-tier rounds in other regions, but you needed a brain or money or both to pull that off.

And here she was trying to get that eighth badge when some of her classmates had been S-tier since they were in the ninth grade. Her pokémon were prepared, but maybe she wasn't. She felt a stab of that old rage: held back by forces claiming to know what was best for her, and the advice she'd needed to hear delivered so condescendingly that she would've said the sky was green just to disagree. Well, she'd gotten free at last, but it still rankled. She leaned on Tarahn and he purred like an engine.

Eventually the fire-types paused to rest, and Moriko brought Ganny and Rufus hot water and pokéblocks. Ganny sipped at his delicately while Rufus drank a couple of buckets' worth, and both fire-types charred their spicy pokéblocks before eating them.

"Show Rufus some more cool attacks," Tarahn suggested, his mouth full of chalky pink sweet-flavor blocks.

"Which one would you like?" the emboar asked, eyes twinkling.

Rufus looked at him narrowly. "What did you do? To my back?"

Ganny put out his hand and sparked the Blowtorch attack again: it was a needlepoint attack, close range, but it shone like a star. Terrible power, compressed into laser-like focus, and doubly effective against metal.

Rufus put out a hand, his nostrils flaring, as some energy-sense communication passed between the two pokémon.

"…Can I learn that?"

"Perhaps not as tight as the master the first time," Ganny teased, "but certainly you can perform it. There are yet more techniques in the canon of the rangers and ranger-pokémon, if only you would care to learn. Your friend Tarahn has done very well."

"Like what?"

"Watch this!" Tarahn said, leaping up and scattering pokéblocks. Vleridin leaned over and casually lipped up a few of them.

The raigar tossed out rings of electrical energy that settled just above the ground. "Step on them, Ru!"

He narrowed his eyes behind his steel armor. "Those are traps."

"You'll be okay!"

Rufus shrugged and clomped over to one of the rings, only to have a burst of purple poison energy bubble up on his hooves before he even reached them—harmless to steel-types.

"See?" Tarahn said proudly. "Misdirection. That's psychology, right?"

Rufus grunted. "What about you, Vleridin?"

The mooskeg didn't move, but suddenly Rufus yelped—a vine had crept up his back and shoved a thorn into his armpit, where his thick armor couldn't protect him.

"I could have pierced you straight to the heart from there," Vleridin told him. She showed her teeth, but in a playful way.

Rufus showed his, equally playfully, and yanked away the vine. "Huh. Rangers are all sneak attacks then?"

"Quite a lot, to tell you true," Ganny said contemplatively. "Traps, binding moves, devastating attacks at a weak point to drive off wild pokémon and ronin. We do not fight to fainting, but to _neutralize_. See?"

"Yeah." The oxhaust whuffed loudly. "Maybe this is all for fast pokémon, then."

"Ah, not so—there are those of us who protect others and take damage so that they may strike in turn. So!"

Ganny took a low stance and then thrust forward with his shoulder and forearm, producing a momentary but intense burst of fire, and then followed up with a barrage of punches. Tarahn fell in behind him, arcing thunderbolts to pass around him and strike some imaginary opponent ahead of them, the lightning cooking the dirt to glass in puffs of burnt dust.

"And I would root or attack the opponent," Vleridin added, "while the two fliers bombarded them further. Though that would be a strong ronin indeed to require five."

Moriko thought she saw an extra wave of fire break over Rufus's crest of flames, but perhaps that was just wishing.

"Have you fought ronin already?" Rufus asked them.

Ganny chuckled. "I? Many times, young Rufus."

"A little, during the summer field schools," Moriko explained. "It's rare that we'll find one, but sometimes they're drawn out by all the student rangers."

"What is the field school?"

"During the summer we keep learning, but not from books." Rufus brightened considerably at that. "The teachers take us out into the wilderness and we help people who need pokémon abilities or other help from us, things like… maintaining trails or looking for rockslides. The buildup of energy tells us when things are about to change or how to fix things that aren't working."

Rufus scratched at his side, where the skin met armor. "I could probably do that," he said aloud.

"Pokémon don't have to learn from books like humans," Vleridin told him. "We learn from teachers all year. We practice and get stronger. If your heart is not in battling anymore, then you should stay here. There is much hard work in ranger school, battling and field work both."

"No, I like that kind of work," Rufus replied. "I _like_ battling." He was clenching his fists again, and he sighed.

"I know, Ru," Moriko said. "I'm sorry I hurt you. Why don't we give the ice gym a try, and you can learn from Ganny along the way, and you can decide later? If you don't want to go with me in the end, that's okay."

"I do want to go," Rufus mumbled. "But…"

"You could also talk to Prof. Willow and go with another trainer or ranger," Moriko continued, her heart falling. "It doesn't have to be me. I bet you could go with Matt if you wanted."

Rufus shook himself, like he was dislodging a fly. "Why do you want me?" he asked suddenly. "When you have Ganny?"

"Ganny isn't my pokémon," Moriko said, patient. "He's a teacher at the school. Tarahn asked him to come with us, to show you what you were missing… and to boost if you didn't want to come. But I hope you do. I miss you so much, Rufus."

Tarahn rubbed up against Rufus's legs as he stood. "You should come!" he said. "We'll be back together like before!"

Rufus exhaled and nodded slowly. "Okay. The ice gym. What are _you_ going to teach me?"

"Oh, I can teach many things, young Rufus," Ganny replied. "I teach battling, yes, but more importantly, the art of ranger-pokémon. It is different than the arena! We value precision. No collateral damage. When the time comes for you to save a child, you must not burn them, only the ropes holding them. Can you do it? Can you cause fire to form? Or can you only breathe it?"

Rufus stared. "What?"

Ganny put one of his fingers to his tusked mouth and looked devious. In a heartbeat, Tarahn screeched and rolled to put out the tiny fire that had started on his back.

"Ganny!" Moriko scolded him.

"Just a little surprise, I promise," the emboar reassured her, only slightly abashed. "Not even a burn. No?"

"Don't, do that, again," Tarahn said, washing his tail in an I-meant-to-do-that fashion.

"You made the fire start on him? With your head?" Rufus asked. "That's for psychics."

"Oh, not so, not so, young Rufus. We all use energy, every one of us uses energy—well, except for young Moriko—we all use it without thinking. You breathe in, and energy flows through your body, and you exhale flame, little bursts of Ember or the Inferno Overdrive that takes everything. And you are using it _badly_!" Ganny said gleefully. "After but a few moments you battlers are puffing and blowing! How can you last an hour fighting a giant? Three hours? Six hours without rest in pouring rain and mudslides? When you know your energy you can hit only with exactly what is needed. So! Shall I teach you, young Rufus?"

Spirit flames danced eagerly at the oxhaust's eyes and armored mouth. "Yes. Please."

Ganny trotted to the edge of the park, and came back with a dried-out hunk of branch, much-chewed-on by pokémon jaws, and another that he tossed to the ground at Rufus's hooves. Ganny snorted a puff of fire onto the wood he held.

"Find the energy in this fire," said the emboar. "'Ha!' you think. 'It is so easy, Ganny, the fire is there.' No, no, not so simple: you are seeing, you are not knowing. Find the flame! Find its edges, find the flux, find the place where dead plant becomes fire and fire becomes air and light. And when you touch this energy, you say, come to me… and come to here. Yes? Now, you try."

Rufus frowned, his eyes closing and his jaw working soundlessly. Long minutes passed, and Moriko quelled her disappointment. It was his first try. There was time—

The kindling at Rufus's feet lit.

x.x.x.x.x

Every time they stopped to rest and train, it made her heart hurt to see Rufus with the others as if nothing had happened_—_and yet, gods, wasn't it nice to have everyone back together? This almost felt like a real vacation.

With Ganny along, Moriko didn't even have to chivvy her team along to perform their energy exercises—he took care of that, calling out encouragement and critique as fire, lightning, and fairy energy whizzed around the attack-hardened dojos or empty fields. It left her free to check up on the giant pokémon that had precipitated this whole mess, and the chances of her impromptu gym challenge being cut short had shrunk precipitously: the kaiju mantine had wandered drunkenly closer to the southern region of Bahia, prompting evacuations and tsunami warnings.

It made her queasy, but Moriko couldn't stop checking and re-checking the feeds, looking for video captures of the rangers coordinating their aerial attacks on the giant, and unable to tear her eyes away from the worried parents and children waiting to be loaded into buses and driven away inland. Two years ago, a tsunami from the kaiju whiscash's massive attack had devastated Porphyry City's coastal side and about a hundred people had died, all told. There were still people missing thought to have been hit by the tsunami elsewhere around the Lacuna Sea coast. They'd probably all been declared dead by now.

They were going to take the ferry up the east coast of Gaiien, so she wouldn't have to see the massive scars on the west-coast fjords still regrowing plant cover.

**MSato10**: My field school got postponed because of the mantine  
**MSato10**: What are you guys up to?  
_— Message read by M_M_M_Matt42 2 hours ago —_

Moriko sighed, flicking away the messenger app and focusing on the move analyzer on her pokédex. Tarahn came over to her, shaking off some damage-over-time move, and started begging for pokéblocks by rubbing up against her legs.

"Did you do all your exercises?" she asked him, pretending to be a disciplinarian; she could see the readout of all the moves the pokémon were practicing and they were hitting all the categories on the workout.

"Oh please, miss," the raigar said, rolling on the dojo floor, "I am but a simple kitty who has never been fed, not once."

"Your words have moved me, gentle kitty," Moriko replied. "Which flavor?"

Thana came by for her pokéblocks as Tarahn made a mess of his, spraying sugary pink dust everywhere, and she gravely accepted the pokémon energy-infused snack. Pokémon loved them; Moriko had tried one once, but they were just expensive chews to a human, and they were _strong_. The spicy ones felt like they could burn a hole in the roof of your mouth, and the less said about the bitter ones, the better.

"How are you feeling about being back in Gaiien, Thana?"

The oberant shrugged, raising and lowering her antennae. "I had never been so far from the hive before I met you, Moriko, so these sights... they remind me of the first days of that journey with you. I remember being very anxious."

"Oh! Sorry to bring it back."

"Not at all_—_it is amusing how nervous I was then, and how much more I have learned." She sighed, a little regretful puff of air through her spiracles. "I am glad we are not near the desert, however_—_I am not looking forward to recounting all I have learned to my parent, the queen. It will take days, and there shall be many interruptions, I am sure. Though perhaps it would be better to be done with, rather than further elongating the tale with more experiences."

"Would you like to go there after all?"

"No. No I do not. I thank you for the excuse not to go."

Moriko laughed. "Here's to procrastination, then."

x.x.x.x.x

Before long Moriko was back at Port Littoral's passenger docks. The water was still a touch cool at this time of year, but there were people taking advantage of the sun on the beach and walking along the boardwalk. The pokémon mystic offering to rebalance pokémon's chakras for a small donation toward his pilgrimage to Nalea was set up under a tree on the beach. Moriko was certain it was the same guy who'd been there since she was eleven or so, and wondered if he'd ever made it to Nalea.

The ferry took her up the coast with a brief stop at each tidal power installation along the way. At Port Varlea she switched to a heavier vessel for the longer journey along a less-populated coastline; the Northern Gaiien Passage was ahead, and then Sastruga Fjord.

This season, the current was with them and the weather mild; it would change in late summer, turning the route into an unpleasant, slow, and heaving journey. It was hard to do the Gaiien circuit in a single summer for that reason; by the time trainers—even those making good time—were done with the sixth and seventh badges, it was Barf Boat season.

During their gym circuit, even if Moriko and her companions hadn't run into all that supernatural horseshit, they would have likely just finished the seventh gym—hell, maybe only the sixth—before school started again in the fall. Trainers with money could squeeze it in by taking an infrequent flight from Porphyry, or chartering one. But if you had to linger too long you could be stuck there for the rest of the autumn and long winter.

The new ferry was heavy and industrial, packed with supplies for the monitoring stations at the Northern Passage and Sastruga Fjord itself, and even further north where there were other mysterious scientific stations. The main wave of spring workers had already come in, but there were a few stragglers aboard, and adventure-seekers and photographers looking to capture Northern Gaiien's austere beauty and spring plantlife. Moriko wasn't sure why they wanted to come here instead of literally any tropical region, but people were weird.

There were a few trainers aboard with six or more pokéballs around their waists; they nodded at Moriko politely when she saw them. Her hands itched to challenge them, and Vleridin did too, cooped up like the other pokémon. But there was no battling aboard a boat with high-level pokémon like hers, unless she wanted a hefty fine and/or jail time.

They'd lasted through longer trips than this, though. Eventually all checks were complete and all cargo stowed, and the ferry was towed out to deep water where its anti-grav engines could power up. Within a half-day they were leaving even the Northern Passage behind.

The rocky coast of North Gaiien lurked in the mist; there were big animals in the pine forest, and pokémon that looked like them: mooskeg, Gaiienese ursaring, yulerein, wintris, and pokémon that looked like the trees and the rocks and the ice too. Huge icebergs passed silently in the night, the helm giving them a wide berth in case they turned out to be sleeping deepwild avalugg.

The sun rose again, but the sea fog had advanced, leaving the ship cruising through black water in a gray world with no end. Moriko patrolled the deck to stretch her legs and then went right back to her cabin, pulling up her downloaded logs of Polaris's public gym matches to study.

She must have nodded off, because she was awoken by the sudden and oppressive silence of the ferry's shut-down engines. She sat up blearily, checking her pokédex map.

It insisted that they were still at sea, far from Sastruga.

Something was wrong; she heard the pokémon in their pokéballs and Vleridin at her heart all begin to chatter.

"Did we stop?" her cabin-mate asked her, groggy.

"It's too early. I'm gonna check," Moriko answered.

She dressed and slipped out of the cramped cabin. It was _cold_ outside, her breath fogging, and the air was choked with mist.

"Show me, Vleridin," Moriko murmured, and the mooskeg's energy-sight confirmed her suspicion: this was pokémon mist, the energy zigzagging through the vapor with purpose instead of random association.

The ship heaved, and Moriko grabbed for handholds. There wasn't even a yell in the stillness afterward, or she couldn't hear it; where was the crew?

Damn the rules: Moriko tossed Rufus and Ganny's pokéballs to the deck, and the fire-types instinctively crouched, advancing along the deck with their hands on the railings. Vleridin phased out of Moriko's body, her antlers yawing as she looked around, following the energy.

"Are we even moving, Vleridin?" Moriko whispered.

"Yes—though slowly."

Moriko flicked Thana's pokéball into the air. "What are they saying at the conn?"

The oberant's antennae flicked toward the wheelhouse, and she hopped up deck by deck.

_They're confused—they don't know where the mist came from or why they've slowed._

_Shoot,_ Moriko sent back. _Maybe we shouldn't be up here. Just causing more—_

Another heave threw Moriko to her knees, and this time she heard other people shrieking—and insectile claws scrabbled on the gunwales ahead of her. Lots of them.

"Rufus—"

Rufus swatted at the claws nearest to him with a fiery hand, and they jerked away, heaving the ship further. Ganny hurled globes of fire into the air to cut through the mist, followed by a Black Snake to pursue the attacker. The crackling, smoking fire-type attack whizzed through the air to the bow and dove over the side into the ocean; after a moment, the claws on the boat withdrew.

The emboar tutted. "Of course old Ganny is fighting a sea monster on his vacation," he muttered.

"A water-type _I_ can deal with, certainly," Vleridin replied. She didn't bother trying to traverse the rocking deck, and summoned a pillar of seawater to Surf on.

"Show yourself, ronin!" the mooskeg called, flinging Octobriars onto the ocean surface. The balls of thorns unfolded into many-armed masses that pinwheeled along, looking for targets.

"Get ready to attack when it shows itself, Thana!" Moriko called. "Rufus, Ganny, do you want—"

The ferry heaved again, a pointed head appearing over its side. It was enormous, crowned with icy, shimmering feathers above its multiple pairs of eyes.

"Earth's daughter," Karaxil, Demon of Frost and Starlight said, its voice echoing in Moriko's mind. "I hoped I might find you here. We have much to speak of."

* * *

:) I'm baaaaaaaack. Here's the bridging story between Gods and Demons I and II (forthcoming). Hope you enjoy! Some accompanying illustrations will be on my **deviantart/tumblr(gaiienpokedex)/pokecharms(keleri)**, and my maps of Gaiien and fakemon are always there. I'm trying a slightly different capitalization style this time, uncapitalized pokemon species names but capitalized techniques.

It's inelegant but I know how confusing these full-team pokefics get even without throwing fakemon into the mix, so here's a cheat sheet for Moriko's team:

Tarahn - Raigar (M) - Electric/Poison cougar  
Liona - Nigriff (F) - Dark/Fighting griffin  
Vleridin - Mooskeg (F) - Water/Grass moose  
Thanasanian - Oberant (F) - Bug/Fairy anthro moth  
[temporary] Ganny - Emboar (M) - Fire/Fighting anthro boar  
[temporary?] Rufus - Oxhaust (M) - Fire/Steel armored minotaur


	2. Frost and Starlight

II. Frost and Starlight

_That corpse you planted last year in your garden,  
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?  
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?_

_June 7__th__–8__th__, 130 CR _

It felt like everyone else on the boat had crowded to the opposite end. Moriko was alone with the enormous, serpentine pokémon, its segmented legs scrabbling on the deck, and its ticked fur shedding chunks of frozen seawater. Rufus and Ganny flanked her on either side.

It was an auroraboros, a pokémon that was a legendary and a demon both, a pokémon that could feed not only off the energy of other pokémon, but of humans', too. Regular pokémon, even legendaries, had been tamed by fair exchange—more or less fair—with humans, who provided energy and opportunity to gain battle prowess in trade for the unique powers pokémon possessed.

What could one offer a demon that they could not take?

And yet, here they were, talking.

Her initial shock aside, Moriko had to say that Karaxil looked… good, much better than the pale shadow of a pokémon that had spent hundreds of years imprisoned underground. It seemed more lithe and shiny, its movements more dynamic.

The last time she'd seen it had only been for a moment. It had dragged a legendary pokémon—a hybrid, merged with a human—called Ituras, the Gray Prince, underwater and been lost to sensors. Evidently it had won after that sneak attack.

Or had it merely escaped? Had the Prince escaped? Where _was_ the Gray Prince?

"The ice clan-priest requested your presence. I set out to find you at once," Karaxil was saying.

_The who?_

Moriko had no idea where to start. But her Pokémon Behavior classes had always recommended an exaggerated politeness, like you were speaking to an interviewer or the First Ambassador, if you weren't sure.

"I see, thank you for your solicitousness," Moriko said, bowing. "I believe the vessel is close to Sastruga Fjord. Please, would you care to ride in with us?"

"That will be acceptable," Karaxil said, to Moriko's surprise.

It arranged itself on the prow of the boat, its long body and quill-tipped tail drawing out of the water. Moriko asked Thana to tell the captain that it was—probably—safe to continue on, if they could get the ferry started again. The mist was already disappearing.

Moriko had expected it to spirit her away in some fashion, hopefully not by dragging her underwater too. But as she watched the demon pokémon, she realized that she could see places on its hide where the scales had healed off-pattern, and that its huffing breaths were subtly slowing, its cervical gill-covers opening and closing.

Well. It had been two years, but it had fought a god. No judgement to still be recovering.

x.x.x.x.x

As the ship pulled up to Sastruga Fjord, Moriko was dogged by two spirits of fire and one of ice, and she suspected the ferry captain was very, very glad to see the back of her. The sky was leaden, heavy over the red-paneled buildings set high above the cold ground on stilt legs, but the pokémon center/inn had a cheerful interior, cozy with a hot fireplace and hot fish soup.

She hadn't been ready for the cold: Moriko had lived in muggy Port Litorral nearly her whole life and then nearly-tropical Mossdeep for school, and she immediately hit the gear rental to swap out some of her borrowed winter clothing for even warmer dress. She'd been told that Sastruga was mild at this time of year, but the wind was like a knife, strong and damp, and she needed a heavy fleece and winter jacket, and a big rain coat over it all. It wasn't even below freezing yet. She couldn't imagine winter.

The locals seemed to be used to it, less bundled-up or in better-fitting personal gear or both. Moriko looked at the distant wall of the glaciers in the hills, forbidding above spring's first green shoots in the lowlands, and she stuffed her gloves with hand warmers.

Karaxil, part ice-type, was unaffected, and the locals seemed unperturbed by the huge pokémon sleeping by the harbor as Moriko took care of her errands. It seemed the gym leader—the ice clan-priest?—was away, and his second was busy with the other trainers who'd beaten Moriko to the gym. She didn't mind having to wait in line, but she wasn't impressed by him taking leave at the beginning of the season, the only time his gym was really available to challenge.

"He may be searching for me," Karaxil admitted, when Moriko rejoined it. "I left perhaps… _unexpectedly_ at his expressed desire to meet with you."

Moriko's heart thudded, wondering what kind of international incident she'd precipitated this time. "Why _did_ he want to see me?"

Karaxil yawned, baring its needle teeth. "There is a demon in the hinterland. You have some experience with such."

The auroraboros was not talkative, though not silent, either—but it would only answer questions with evasions and circumlocutions. Moriko suspected it, dragonlike, treated conversation as a duel and any admission of true personal information was a point lost. She decided to think of it a coworker instead, and asked for recreational recommendations, finding out the best places to sit in the sun or roll in the snow, and where one could find the best whole, raw fish.

Vleridin sat with them, watchful; she had a healthy apprehension for the demon, but did not strike before it did. Moriko added Karaxil's aura data to the pokédex database, and with her university account she could see all the anonymized entries that had come before hers. She guessed that Polaris had been—in contact with? Taking care of?—the auroraboros for about eighteen months.

Despite its long imprisonment, Karaxil seemed not to have travelled far or done much with its new freedom; legendary pokémon got their energy from absorbing environmental energy and battling like regular pokémon, but they needed so much that they spent a great deal of time sleeping. And the auroraboros was recovering from that battle with the demon pokémon Ituras.

Moriko had to wonder if it had been getting energy from gym battles on Polaris's team, although she would have seen outraged articles about _that_ on the internet, no matter how isolated the gym was.

Its head swung around midsentence, as did Vleridin's, and Moriko followed their gazes to see a flying pokémon approaching them. Before long, Polaris had come to them, hopping off the back of a hovering white reindeer-like pokémon, a guide forme yulerein. He was a stocky man, not tall, and—aggravatingly—he was wearing shorts and a hoodie.

"Aren't you cold?" Moriko blurted out as she shook his hand.

"Why? It's a nice day," he said dryly. He had white hair, or nearly white with a touch of blue in it, and similarly pale eyes and brown skin. "I see you two have met," he added, looking between Karaxil and Moriko.

"I see _you_ two have met," Moriko replied. "The last time I saw it, it ended an international incident. How did it end up here?"

"Same way I find a lot of pokémon, actually. I found it on the beach one day covered in ice and blood, and I brought it to the pokémon center. "

"With firearms trained on me," Karaxil murmured.

"Well." Polaris shrugged. "Can't be too careful. Since then we've got to know each other better."

Moriko caught eyes looking at them from windows and around doorjambs, and Polaris said, "Why don't we head back to the gym?"

Karaxil lifted off into the air, its body eeling away into the blue sky and scudding clouds, while Moriko and Polaris strolled up the rocky street.

"So..." Moriko said. "You know it's a demon pokémon, right?"

Polaris pulled an aura monitor out of his pocket and gestured with it briefly. It would detect if Karaxil or any other pokémon was leeching energy from him. "I keep an eye on this. But it's been good so far."

"Why?"

"Curiosity. A test. Sometimes you have to put your rifle down first, you know?"

Moriko nodded. "Yeah. Well. Can I challenge you? I've come from Hoenn—I'm from Gaiien originally, but—"

"You can fight my second. There's something that needs my attention in the hinterland. I've let the rangers at the Northern Passage know already. If needed. But if you wanted… you can come with me instead. Ranger student, right? And you know something about all this… demon business."

Moriko's stomach clenched. "Yeah."

Oh no. Oh no. She'd vowed to avoid supernatural stuff if she possibly could—that summer with the Gray Prince and the Wandering Fire and all their bullshit had been enough. She'd be happy to clear brush and help kids from now on, and help when giants showed up. _Really_.

But this was what she'd signed up for, as a ranger: helping gym leaders when they requested it, keeping humans safe, keeping pokémon safe. She was still a student! Maybe she should leave it to the masters for once, get her badge and go home. Time was ticking on the giant mantine.

Something warned her; the bright northern sunlight was suddenly too harsh, the gray hills and white mountains unforgiving and distant. If South Gaiien had been wild, North Gaiien was wilder still, ready to devour the unwary and leave no trace of them. There were things out there more terrible than wolf and bear and saberteeth, more powerful than pokémon.

She sighed. She couldn't not go. It was what she was.

x.x.x.x.x

The gear store employees blinked to see Moriko back so soon. Polaris got her even more winter clothing, high-tech gear for cold flying that she immediately cranked the temperature control on. This was more like it; she could feel her ass again, numbness subsiding in painful waves.

He laughed, seeing her expression. "Not a cold-weather girl, I take it?"

She shook her head. "I'm from south Gaiien, and I've been going to school in Hoenn. I think it got to be ten degrees Celsius one winter when I was a kid, and that was scary."

"See, forty with humidity would actually kill me. Thirty and I'm dying. And you left your sweaty-ass greenhouse just to see me?"

"Yeah. Well—and to get one of my pokémon."

"That sounds like a story, want to share?"

"He stayed behind when I went to school. My oxhaust."

"That sucks. Wait—didn't you mega evolve him? Wasn't that your grand showdown with the legendary?"

Moriko smiled ruefully. "Sounds like you heard Belladonna tell the story. Yeah, I ensouled him and we mega evolved. But he wasn't ready."

Polaris blinked and then whistled. "Oh wow. Did he come back…?"

"He agreed to come fight you. But no ensouling, no mega evolving. And I don't know if he'll come back to Hoenn. He has a good gig going at the steel smelter."

"That's… wow. Believe me, I know a little of how bad that must have been. Cool, I'll give you a good fight when this is over."

"Thanks. I really… I got the last couple badges for services to the gym, not actually fighting the leaders," she admitted. "I need to know I'm at tier, battle-wise. It's been eating at me."

Polaris grinned. "You'll know after you fight me."

"You're an adept too?"

"Yes, one of the few fullblood third-crossing adepts." He winked. "No, there are lots of third crossing adepts, but it _is_ around a two to one split in favor of fullblood and halfblood second crossing trainers. Then again, there are plenty of fullblood second crossing people in Nalea without any adept talent." He sighed. "And good for them. Ensoulment is dangerous."

Moriko nodded. "I've been told that."

Polaris looked at her sharply. "And yet you're walking around with your mooskeg. Don't—"

"Vleridin is ball-phobic," Moriko interrupted. "She's out most of the time, just like this for situations that don't accommodate her size."

Polaris blew out his breath, allowing this. "Alright. Honestly, that's the best advice I can give—don't do it. Even with animaegis, you can't spend that long. You'll lose each other."

"Animaegis?"

He waved a hand. "Mental resilience, fortitude. Whatever they're calling it now."

"Uh, like, meditating? Positive thinking?"

"You—you _must_—the training you're doing with your master. Your master who's training you. In adeptry."

"Mmm. One of the senior professors is an adept and I was supposed to train with her, but she keeps pushing me off because she's too busy, keeps promising _next_ semester."

Polaris looked absolutely stricken, his pale gaze jumping from Moriko to his pokédex and back again.

"…Okay. Okay," he said finally, slapping his hands together and breathing deeply. "Before we go _anywhere_, I am going to give you the crashiest of crash courses in mental resilience."

x.x.x.x.x

Polaris brought Moriko to the Sastruga Gym, a low building nearly indistinguishable from the other long warehouses near the harbor. As they walked to a training room, she could hear faint noise of the battles proceeding in the hardened arena, muffled sounds of pokémon roars and beam attacks. The training room was similarly hardened, but without the stadium seating of the main arena. The spongy floor would absorb some of the energy from attacks, and there were the familiar shielding baffles on the walls.

"Should I bring out any pokémon?" Moriko asked him, as they hung up their gear.

"No—just us for this first part."

Polaris sat down crosslegged, and Moriko realized that this was going to be the long, boring process that "mental discipline" suggested. There didn't seem to be too much associated mystical mumbo jumbo, at least.

He exhaled, hands on his knees, and Moriko mimicked his pose.

"Alright. Tell me how you found out you were an adept."

Moriko told him the story: Vleridin, mortally wounded while fighting for Moriko under duress, jumping into her body in revenge.

"Ah, you stumbled into it. That's happening more and more. We want kids to forget about it, not to try it—pokéballs are safer. But sometimes you figure it out by accident, and then you have no mental discipline, and when you join… well, you get everything and the pokémon gets everything."

Moriko nodded. Ironically, that was what had bound Vleridin to her: their shared memories provided a beginning for mutual understanding. If she'd had mental defenses… well, if she'd been more properly trained, she'd likely never have tried to pursue Vleridin-the-wild-pokémon in the first place. So it went.

"We bleed into each other a lot," she said. "Thoughts and worries about this or that."

"_That_ needs to stop," Polaris said gently. "Psychic hygiene is important. Adepts have ended up with mental injuries, lost memories, damaged senses of self, not just in the sagas. Real life. The pokémon has to take them over just to continue and then can't get free. It's safety for both."

"Well—"

"You aren't in _trouble_," Polaris said. "This is a super common mistake. But you do need to heal what damage may already have been done."

"Alright."

"First step: Try to quiet your mind. Close your eyes. Develop an awareness of your body. Feel every part of it, like it's a pool and your mind is the fish swimming in it. Except the pool is also the fish, and the fish the pool, and the fish can splash the water if it wants."

"Uh…"

"_Crash_ course. I told you. Find the edges of your body, and try to disturb the fluid. You can speak mind-to-mind with your pokémon? Do that, but to no one in particular."

Moriko sighed and tried to imagine as much as Polaris was describing. _Hello world_, she sent, imagining the words projecting from her head like usual, and then as if they were sloshing around her body and falling to skitter away on the ground.

_Loud_, Vleridin told her.

"Crash course. Normally you'd spend like a week just meditating with the master. Or more. They'd watch you for flashes of aura. Second step: whoever your best—I mean, whoever you think is the most suited pokémon for this, bring them out."

Vleridin stepped out of Moriko's body and sat on the floor with them, her wide hooves splaying out. "It's me, of course," she said. "Vleridin, Thuridin's get, at your service," she added politely to Polaris.

"Well met and good running," Polaris replied. "To start, reach out for one another through the energy—but stop. Don't dive in. When you ensoul each other right now, you're diving in with everything, and that's dangerous. Look at each other, find the shore. Reach out. You can control how deep you dive. Just wet your hooves."

Moriko wasn't even sure what ensouling really _was_—it had been done by Vleridin always, or something so decided and spontaneous that it just happened. Even that terrible moment when Rufus had recoiled from their first attempt to ensoul, and she'd grabbed for him as the demon came for them—that had been pure panic. She couldn't even say what had really happened.

As she was sitting there wondering, though, Vleridin had come through, extending a cautious vine of energy that Moriko could perceive just behind her eyes, a vein of pure green plant- and water-type energy. She tried to imagine herself reaching out for it.

"Ha! Vleridin is much better at this," Polaris was saying. "She's a natural."

"I was born for this, snowman," Vleridin muttered. "You all are groping around in the dark."

"I love pokémon that talk back," the gym leader said warmly.

Moriko sighed, blowing upward and scattering her loose hair. Mind-to-mind speaking felt a little like lobbing a thought at the recipient, so maybe—

"Ha! Good try. Don't take it just yet, Vleridin, please. Moriko, that was good, but you went with _everything_ again. Know that your body is the pool, and in the pool are currents of water—this is energy, impersonal, identical to every other drop of energy in the universe. _Don't_ throw the fish."

"I'm not sure I completely understand this metaphor," Moriko muttered, but she closed her eyes, breathing deep.

She gripped her knees and then let go again.

She was the fish. She was the pool. She was the earth under the pool. She was the river that ran to the sea and the rain fell upon the sea and she was—

She was the mantine, a mile wide and floating, water and air spiraling up nine miles into a vast thunderhead, and out of bleeding pores on her wings came remoraid the size of cars, falling and falling toward the sea—

Vleridin touched her, gently, and for an instant she could see not just the glow of energy under energy-sight, residues lingering on every surface in the practice room and fresh bolts being traded somewhere beyond in the arena, but a vast network suffusing every living thing and every thing that had ever lived, every band of rock and breath of air, and down it wove, down and up and north and south and directions she couldn't imagine and didn't understand to a Source, vast and precious—

Moriko awoke on the ground with Vleridin's snout in her face, and Polaris and the dark face of a hexx just beyond her.

"Bwuh," Moriko said.

"I ask you to see the light and you stick a fork in a socket," Polaris said dryly, but she could tell he'd been very scared a moment ago.

Moriko's mouth tasted metallic and ashy. "…What happened?" she croaked.

"That was you going in for _everything_ but not into Vleridin. You… I don't even know." He ran his hands through his hair. "Have you ever seen a video game glitch where the character falls through the ground? You fell through the ground into fucking space."

"I have to tell you, Polaris," Moriko said, accepting his offered hand up, "your metaphors, while evocative, are totally nonsensical."

"I try."

Vleridin bumped Moriko's chest with her head. "_Don't_ do that again," she said sharply.

"You went almost too fast for me to pull you back," Polaris's hexx said, a hovering humanoid figure wreathed in floating pale hair and a long, dark dress. "I urge you not to repeat that experiment."

"I don't even know what I _did_," Moriko protested.

"You thought of death," Vleridin said suddenly. "You… There are… We are all connected," she said finally. "There is a place from where we all must come and where one day we all shall go, and that journey can only be disrupted at greatest cost."

"I thought of the daikaiju, just before it happened," Moriko said slowly.

Vleridin and the hexx exchanged an uneasy look. "Giants are dead," Vleridin said softly. "They are so big that it takes them time to realize it."

"Alright, I won't… think about morbid things the next time. This is going to turn into a 'don't think of a pink elephant' thing pretty quickly though. Can I even do this?"

"You know what can happen now, so you'll be able to stop yourself from getting _too_ into it," Polaris said, but he sounded doubtful. "Tell you what, just…" He sighed expressively. "Just… keep ensouling. Don't worry about it for now. Try to practice the meditation step when you get downtime. That's the first step."

"Yeah? Isn't that going to make my, mental damage or whatever worse?"

Polaris waggled a hand. "I mean, you've been doing this for two years, what's a few more days? Just _promise_ you'll see a master when you get back to school. I don't want this on my conscience. I'll write that professor who's blowing you off a sharp letter. Cool?"

Moriko sighed. "Sorry, thank you—I really appreciate you taking the time."

"Standard gym leader stuff. Well, maybe a bit nonstandard. I don't have to pull people out of Hell that often." He grinned. "Keeps things interesting. Meditation is the cliché, by the way, but anything that makes you really aware of and centered in your body would work. Lots of fighting-type specialists do weightlifting, for instance."

"I did want to get jacked as hell," Moriko said thoughtfully.

"But please keep up with it. Mental discipline becomes mental _defenses._ An enemy adept—I mean, God willing, you will never fight an enemy adept, but if you did they could sever your connection with your pokémon or hurt your minds. You could do the same thing to them if they lack defenses."

Moriko turned cold at that. Perhaps that was what the Wandering Fire had done to her and Rufus, splitting them apart from their already problematic ensoulment. She'd always wondered to what extent the demon legendary had been toying with them that day, and that did little to allay her fear.

The Gray Prince had done even more, manipulating her connection with Vleridin and preventing the mooskeg from acting to help the two of them escape. She prayed that she'd never see a powerful demon pokémon again, but life had a way of avoiding giving her what she wanted. She might as well get prepared.

Polaris was checking his pokédex. "Alright, if you're still in, let's head out early tomorrow—it's borderline now but it'll be late before we're actually in the air."

Moriko nodded. The giant mantine incident was still ongoing, and hell, she was in it now. What was a little more waiting?

She turned as she was leaving. "Polaris? What _is_ a giant pokémon?"

He shook his head. "You need a professor for the technical explanation, but if you want another inaccurate but evocative metaphor, from what I've seen…" He stared a long way into nothing. "They're like… weather. And I don't mean 'teehee it'll be sunny tomorrow' weather, I mean like 'ten billion tons of hot and cold air hit each other and somebody in Tanos has a really bad week' weather. And yet… it's only a tiny portion of the entire whole, a momentary blip in the scale of geologic time. Colossal forces come together and then part as if nothing happened, and it's a clear, sunny day again. Make sense?"

"No."

"There you go."

x.x.x.x.x

That night, Moriko checked her email on the inn's wi-fi while enjoying hot cocoa and fresh bread. She was expecting a stern email from the university summoning them all back to field school, but it wasn't there, just the usual periodic administrative notices. Her classmates' social media accounts were filled with Porygram shots of revelry or chilling on the beach, while ranger- and PRED-spotting communities were still posting grainy videos of the giant mantine, which was so far uncontained.

Several personages she remembered from the Lacuna Sea incident were there: Atlitzin the suicune; Ranger-Captain Lark; Gaiien's regional champion, the electric-type specialist Faraday and her pokémon; and Gauche and Droit the mewtwo. There were many other Ranger-Captains and their wings, and other ranger-pokémon and Pan-Regional Elemental Defense specialists all working together to defeat the mantine and its remoraid vassals.

Contrary to her fear of demon pokémon, she had to admit she looked forward to joining the fight on the daikaiju. She couldn't quite say what the difference was; maybe the fact that the monsters were huge, impersonal forces of nature, and not out for her specifically for some boneheaded reason.

**MSato10:** Hey I'm back in Gaiien, it's kind of weird  
**MSato10:** Anyway I'm doing the last badge except Polaris asked me to come look at some demon bullshit  
**MSato10:** Story of my life right  
**M_M_M_Matt42:** :)  
**MSato10:** How are you guys doing?  
_— __Message read by M_M_M_Matt42 28 minutes ago —_

x.x.x.x.x

The sun rose early this far north, and Moriko awoke to a red sky and long shadows. It was unspeakably hard to leave the warm cocoon of her sleeping bag on the squashy inn mattress, but she dressed and packed her gear with sleep-weak hands. She took a coffee from the dispenser with three milks and three sugars outside to meet Polaris, and stood on the lee side of a building to avoid that damn wind. Rufus popped out of his pokéball and she leaned on him, heart warmed figuratively and literally.

Polaris arrived on his yulerein; he was actually wearing pants today, Moriko was relieved/worried to see. He had on his own altitude suit, a tailored personal model instead of the rental one she had and was incredibly grateful for.

Polaris copied the plan for the route to Moriko's pokédex; they were visiting several villages and a power station, and each pin had a note for the reports of demon pokémon that were drawing them out. The path led them north, to the most distant inhabited village.

"You've got a flying pokémon, right?" the gym leader asked her.

Moriko brought out Liona, who immediately fluffed her feathers in the wind; Moriko hesitated, instantly full of doubts about the advisability of flying through the freezing air. She wondered if Polaris would offer her one of his pokémon, and distantly she was aware that riding on Karaxil might be an option, but not one she was enthusiastic about testing. Polaris pursed his lips a moment before bringing out his hexx.

"Atropos can use Icy Veins on your nigriff to make her ice-type temporarily," he explained. "That will give her considerably more stamina in the air."

Moriko blinked. "That sounds great, if—Liona? Do you feel comfortable with that?"

"Ah, yes, please go ahead. I have been ghost-type in class before."

Atropos wove a glittering net of ice-type energy that she draped over Liona like a blanket, and long streaks of white seared into the nigriff's feathers as she gained the transient typing.

"This will last about an hour," the hexx said in a deep and distant voice. "Less if we have to battle. Remind him to renew it."

"I'll remember, Tropo!" Polaris protested.

Atropos smiled before returning to her pokéball.

After comparing gear, Moriko hopped onto Liona's back and waited for Polaris to bring out his yulerein. Instead, Polaris, tier eight gym leader, the last before the elites, grinned and brought out a delibird, the red and white penguin-like pokémon chirping cheerfully. It inflated its tail until it was large enough for Polaris to sit on, and then it kept going until it was the size of a truck, rising gracefully into the air like a hot-air balloon.

"Seriously?" Moriko muttered.

Liona flew upward after Polaris. From the outskirts, a flash of blue was Karaxil flying up to join them, and the demon's long body rippled through the air without obvious propulsion. Soon they'd left the village behind, the delibird moving much faster through the air than simple wind power would allow, and they followed the river inland.

The terrain was rough, scrubby with gravelly debris left by the retreat of glaciers during the last ice age. Well-studied back on Terra, scientists and pokémon professors had wondered what that supremacy of winter on Gaia would have meant for pokémon typing and biodiversity. All they had so far were garbled long-lived legendaries' accounts and a wealth of archeology still undone. Humans had not ventured this far until the third crossing had arrived on Gaia, bringing with them indigenous immigrants eager to preserve and reinvent their ancestors' methods for living in the far north.

Moriko couldn't help watching Karaxil, wondering at the arrangement between it and Polaris. Demon pokémon could take human energy where regular pokémon had to bargain for it, or for some ghost pokémon, tease it away unseen. There were protections for trained pokémon against abuse and exploitation, and in return they received the opportunity to battle without need for lengthy recovery and an energetic connection with a bonded trainer. Energy was everything to them; it allowed them to grow strong, rise socially, become attractive to mates.

That was the foundation of the relationship between humans and pokémon, but demons upended it, able to take what they wanted. The one mercy was that they were few and hated: before humans, they preyed on other pokémon where such a thing was taboo, murder; or on animals, killing them to extract their meager spiritual energy where ordinary pokémon might inhabit them passively. They lived alone, unable to depend on groups to defend territories and support one another with friendly battles. But if a demon could get started, consuming weak opponents and proceeding from there, they could become very powerful indeed.

This was a good country to be alone in. They flew over dark forests with secret gullies still full of snow and ice-type energy, and sullen hollows full of shadow with dark-types slinking between them. Wintris patched half white and half brown loped through their territories, patrolling in packs of lean bodies, their ice-blue eyes upturned to watch as strangers passed overhead.

To the wild pokémon the trainers were ronin, loners deceitful or dangerous or both; the wild pokémon would be prudent to drive them away or destroy them if they got the chance. Elder pokémon often served as judges in such matters, knowing the difference between itinerant strangers and true threats. Demon pokémon and killer pokémon could be powerful, but alone they could fall victim to an elder pokémon who knew what they were and had allies to direct.

However, pokémon did not venture much past their energy sources, and so there were vast stretches of nothing where travelers might pass unnoticed by those without the energy senses to detect them.

Polaris had them land at a tiny hamlet by a free-flowing river. It was deserted; none of the doors were locked, but everything was in good order and the narrow windows were shuttered and insulated.

"Is this bad?" Moriko asked, thinking of another incident: on her journey, Sere Island had been bizarrely deserted under the influence of another demon pokémon, a nosfearat. This lacked the former's sense of oppression, though not its loneliness.

"Not necessarily," Polaris said slowly, scanning with his aura monitor. "The settlers here are very mobile, they'll head out on fishing or gathering expeditions if the season is right."

"Kids? Elderly?"

Polaris shook his head. "The government gives incentives for them to stay in Sastruga with their caregivers. It's got the only hospital. Nobody should be in the hinterland if they're not old enough to have a pokémon or healthy enough to use one. There are saberteeth out here and shit."

Population had always been a compromise on Gaia: not so many people that it stressed the environment and left the settlement vulnerable to disasters, natural or otherwise, but infrastructure like schools and hospitals always needed a minimum. Natural resources were the main industry of the Arctic, and with a little help from pokémon and modern technology the hard work could be almost comfortable. But the very young and old and less-able-bodied needed the safety of a city while the workers headed out into the hinterland.

They managed wild animals and plant life and produced art from natural materials, and fortunes had been made by treasure-hunters heading out with their rock- and steel-type pokémon and sniffing out rare metals and meteorites. Or would be made—claims had been staked, but often the cost of extraction was too high compared to the more temperate deposits still waiting to be exploited elsewhere in the world. There was demand for legally-hunted meat and fish, as well, but for the most part it was done entirely for the local inhabitants.

"Do you have any idea what demon it is?"

Polaris shrugged. "Not too many legends about this far north. We were much more worried about the animals when I came up here. I read a lot of the online ghost stories as a kid: Slendamantis, The Missing Number, Mewzero, skinwalkers. Lots of misidentified pokémon from the early days that aren't quite debunked in some people's minds. It's bullshit, although somebody made up a story that skinwalkers snuck over with the third crossing and picked up even stronger skins from the Pleistocene survivors, and a lot of kids half-believe it."

Moriko thought of the legendary demons she'd seen, ones that took human form to blend in with and hunt humans, and wondered if there was some truth to that.

"I heard you met some of them a couple years ago." Polaris looked at her sideways; he'd obviously been itching to ask her about this.

She hadn't told the story to many people, in fact; it was the kind of thing she'd deliberately avoided mentioning at university, especially after she'd had rumors told about her as the girl from Gaiien's super-tough league. It had bought her scorn and regard, both unearned, though time and other rumors had left her free to be judged on reality rather than imagination.

Probably Belladonna, the poison-type gym leader, had told Polaris about her; or he'd observed bits and pieces among his own tasks—he'd been there too, defending the region.

"Yeah, the Black Queen had to save me and my buddies from them, and then later they found us again at the Lacuna Sea. It's a long story."

Polaris whistled. "Whew, so you _were_ that kid. You owe Bella money for that mega stone."

Moriko snorted ruefully. "Yup, for all the good it did."

She still had it and the focus the Black Queen had given her, despite her terrible desire to chuck them both in the ocean. It was hard to throw away a couple hundred thousand yen no matter how many bad memories it triggered. She'd thought about giving them up to be re-attuned to a new user; mega stones and mega foci were always in demand by, well, everyone. It was selfish, but she knew that if she did, she wouldn't be seeing another one for a long time, if at all.

"No, no, you were useful!" Polaris clapped her on the shoulder, grinning. "The Prince was so concerned with your group that it gave Faraday enough time to get there. Gave me a breather, my team doesn't deal that well with steel-type attacks, of course. I heard you caught a demon, too, a little one."

"Paraslit." It had died, killed by the Gray Prince.

"What was it like? Did you try to train it?"

Moriko laughed humorlessly. "Oh no, I knew better than that, at least—I'd already tried to train an uncooperative regular pokémon, I didn't need to try my luck with a demon. I turned it over to Prof. Maple." She didn't mention how her friend Linden had then stolen it, and tried to train it on the basis that she was believed to be immune to demon attack.

"Huh. Did Maple say much? Does she think they're trainable?"

Moriko shrugged, remembering the paraslit's last act before the demon god had destroyed it: a mild, uncertain rebellion. She remembered the moment in terrible clarity and yet simultaneously through a veil of heart-stopping terror and confusion, so she could never be sure what, exactly, had happened that day.

Had she interpreted the communication that had passed between those two nonhuman intelligences correctly? Psychic-types always had the last word in depositions. The answer that Linden Jr. and Prof. Maple wished was true was that human kindness had persuaded the minor demon to abandon its cruel and dangerous hierarchy. It was a nice thought.

"They can make deals like other pokémon," Moriko said instead. "But they're hard to persuade unless you're a demon master. They don't have the culture for it like other pokémon, even ones that have hardly heard of humans. They... have their own agendas, though." Moriko looked behind them, at the bulk of Karaxil piled in a heap just outside the village. "How did...?"

"Made a deal," Polaris said.

It was her turn to look at him sidelong. "I'm wondering why it wanted to, is the thing," Moriko said.

x.x.x.x.x

Moriko picked her way over to the demon as Polaris did aura scans and his pokémon swept the hamlet, looking for stragglers or enemies.

"Are you well, living up here?" she said finally.

"I am unsure if anyone has ever asked me that." It stared out at the nearby forest. "Yes. I am trying to… live as those in the cycle do. No humans here. I am freed from temptations." It looked at Moriko appraisingly and went on. "Myself, only, and the ice, and the wind, and starlight. As it should be. But I will not lie, I have been experimenting."

"With?"

"The ice clan-priest… Polaris… he came to me and we talked of many things, and one of those things was the power of the demon master, to refuse connection." It was silent. "But the demon master can give it. And in fact anyone can."

Linden and the paraslit. "How does it feel?"

"Strange. 'I could just take this,' I think. 'I could have it all. How dare they seal me in the earth for acting according to my nature.' But was it not their nature to imprison me, to kill those they could, in revenge? And yet I see the clan-priest Polaris—I smell his fear, I feel it pulse at his heart—and he welcomed me to his place, healed my wounds, treated me as an equal. He challenged his nature. Could not I?

"And so I thought of what I would do. Supplicants, acolytes, a great city of ice, as once I ruled. But I thought, how beautiful to see the sky at last. I have had enough years curled in a dragon's lair. Let me enjoy the wind and the rain and the sleeting snow." Its many eyes glittered. "There shall be time for more."

_Yikes_. Well, that was probably as good enough a guarantee as she was going to get from the demon pokémon. Let future dragon-slayers deal with it.

"That day at the Lacuna Sea… I wanted to thank you for saving us. Not even the execution pulse could stop it. Ituras."

Karaxil hissed dismissively. "It was nearly beaten. I, selfishly, thought to steal the killing blow from the other warriors—and I shall admit that I did not realize humans had such powers at their disposal. That I shall remember. I should have let you have it; it was weak, but so was I, and it is slippery, and it ran and ran…

"And finally we attracted the attention of another of our number. The Night's Empress."

Moriko blinked, hastily typing the sobriquet into her pokédex. Gratitude seemed to be the way to get the demon to open up. "Is that… Darkrai?"

Karaxil tutted. "Servants of the gods-who-left. The Empress was one of us."

"One of…? Weren't you one of Ituras's servants?"

Moriko regretted saying that as the auroraboros turned baleful dark eyes on her, and she held up her hands apologetically.

"We fought _alongside_ Ituras before it betrayed us, and it lost. The world was broken, and though they had won, the gods were forced to leave. The gods' servants imprisoned some of us while others ran, and then they, too, slunk away to hide among the ruins. And still Ituras's ghost oozes from country to country eager to be king over dust and bones. It is all foolishness."

Moriko listened attentively; this sounded more or less like the battle between gods and demons that Vleridin had described to her near to when they first met. She _had_ to get Prof. Linden up here to record an account from someone who'd apparently been there.

"What did the Empress do when you were fighting?"

"It trapped me in a Singularity, and when at last I recovered they were both gone and their trail obliterated. For a time I wandered, in the mist and cold air, but I was not well and my wounds did not close, and I knew I would meet my death at last if I did not find a major source. The ice clan-priest found me, and I found that humans' power could heal as well as destroy, mightily.

"And so I rested. But ever my comrades and I are drawn back together, it seems. Or one of our underlings and I."

"Where did the Night's Empress go? Ituras?"

Its segmented legs rippled. "I cannot guess. The Night's Empress can live in the void beyond the vault of heaven. It must have gone far indeed if it escaped the notice of the god-servants these many years."

"Could it protect Ituras there too?"

"Perhaps. Ituras is a creature of the shadow, however; I think it would avoid the fierce and unfiltered light that travels through the cosmos. Perhaps the Empress left it on some forsaken shore, as eventually I was. You should tell your hunters this." It pulled back its lips. "It would amuse me to see them captured at last. No, earth's daughter, I do not know where they could have gone, and I would tell you if I could. Let no one say that the Demon of Frost and Starlight cannot learn its lesson. Let the hunters have the kill; let me enjoy only the word of its death."

x.x.x.x.x

The next stop was the geothermal energy plant that fed Sastruga and its hamlets electricity and heat. Water superheated by magma was captured to heat water and drive turbines, and the site was bathed in elemental energy and crawling with pokémon. Conflynx and Gaiienese noctowl, skuaargh and tamguin, and geysard everywhere, the latter fire- and water-type perfectly suited to the area. Even the evolved form, tiamat, very rare elsewhere, had several huge specimens lounging about the steaming inflows and outflows, and a glittering cloud vented and floated away as a nearby geyser system released pressure.

In the center of the plant was the hulking form of a legendary, a volcanion. A legendary was often the linchpin and manager of elemental enterprises like this, as the heatran had been back at Rufus's steel mill. The only problem was that they could grow bored suddenly and abandon the project—but legendaries tended to be long-lived, and their attention spans lasted decades. Usually. There were few things that legendaries liked more than such generous power sources, which provided a smorgasbord of power in exchange for minor effort, and a built-in supply of lesser pokémon supplicants.

Polaris tossed out a couple of pokémon, Atropos the hexx and a big antepard, a two-headed leopard, to speak with the lounging wild pokémon. He and Moriko went their own way to do a run-through of the energy plant. It turned out that the missing inhabitants of the hamlet were there, crashing in the dorms for the plant's human employees. They'd sent a communication to the local rangers that hadn't been forwarded to Polaris yet.

"There was a whitikhan," the headwoman explained, as teenagers were having a slightly rowdy ad-hoc lesson from an elder in the cafeteria behind her. "One of our people fell ill, and we were getting ready to fly him to Sastruga when one of the pokémon found it. And one of the hunters went out alone and hasn't come back." A twist in her mouth suggested that this may or may not have been related, but the subject was a damnfool all the same.

Moriko checked her pokédex surreptitiously; whitikhan was another cryptid pokémon species, like paraslit had been when she had first encountered it. Whitikhan was much better-documented, though: the entry's grainy photos were accompanied by genuine pokédex metadata and energy data, enough to say that the observing trainer really had encountered an undocumented pokémon.

Their abilities, though, were pure speculation: cryptopokémonologists had proposed a modest set of ghost- and ice-type abilities based on the energy data, as well as the classic demon ability to aggressively drain human energy and initiate possession. Meanwhile, cryptid enthusiasts online had workshopped a wide variety of gruesome possibilities.

Upon detection the whitikhan appeared to have vanished, but the whole hamlet had packed up to leave for the busier power plant and the aegis of the volcanion and its energy senses. It occurred to Moriko that the crowded welter of the plant might have been a better place for a predator to lie in wait than the lonely tundra, but the volcanion had reassured them of its ability to detect intruders, and that its vassals were capable of same.

Polaris continued interviewing the villagers while Moriko explored the plant. She followed stainless steel walkways further and further down into the steam, and came to a number of decorative pools where the raw water bubbled up and left coarse rings of sediment. She tossed out Rufus and Ganny's pokéballs so they could enjoy the warm temperature.

Rufus touched the fatally hot—to a human, anyway—water gingerly and then more confidently, with wonder. Ganny bent his head to drink from the geyser stream.

"What do you think, boy?" Ganny asked. "Can you believe this water? So perfectly filled with fire!"

"I didn't know," Rufus said, cupping his hands and letting the water run out of them over and over. "Moriko made me hot water from a kettle, before. But this..."

"Fire and water and earth all together, and steel and dragon too, if you're lucky. This is the water of the gods, straight out of the center of the earth, where souls go."

"Where souls go?" Moriko repeated.

"Ah yes," the emboar said somberly. "Humans do not have souls and cannot go there, but at the center of the earth is the heart of fire, greatest of elements and source of all life. That is where souls are born, and they come to the surface to be matched with a body. When they body dies, the souls return to the fire. So it goes."

"I see," Moriko said, not contradicting him. "That's fascinating."

_Sounds like when I fell through the ground_, Moriko said to Vleridin, who didn't answer.

Eventually Polaris rejoined them, looking down from a plant catwalk. "Didn't feel like bathing, Moriko?"

"Wanted to keep my skin," she called up.

He laughed. "It's wonderful stuff when it's cooled down a bit. They use it for the onsen in Sastruga, you'll come out of the water covered in scale. That's why you can buy a vinegar scrub for afterward."

"I'm surprised you don't get more tourists up here with a pitch like that," Moriko said dryly.

"One day," Polaris said cheerfully. "Russet has us beat for now, but they'll come around."

"What did you find out? Do you think it's really a whitikhan?"

"I can't commit without the pokédex data. It's _possible_ that someone got sick and coincidentally they saw a weird pokémon nearby or their pokémon fought one, and the whole town emptied out for nothing. But at the very least I think something unusual happened that frightened them, and that's worth investigating on planet Gaia."

"I hear that. What's our next stop?"

"Qagaaqtuq and then Kaamanen—we're getting to the high latitudes now, you'll be glad of your proper gear. I may even turn on my hand warmers."

x.x.x.x.x

The next few villages were deserted, too, although these had radioed ahead to confirm their evacuation. But protector pokémon had fought—something—and the energy traces still lingered, ice- and fairy- and ghost-type energy from the enemy pokémon's techniques as it had engaged and retreated. Heading north.

The empty villages were unsettling. Moriko had dealt with such before, on Sere Island. Well, not dealt; she'd just seen it, seen enough to call the rangers and people who knew what they were doing. She didn't know what she was doing still, even with two years of ranger school under her belt. She'd barely scratched the surface, it felt like.

But it felt familiar. More than the paraslit, less than the sobriquet-bearing demons. It was like the nosfearat.

That demon still lived, as far as she knew, passed into some uncertain fate among professors and researchers. The lieutenants, to say nothing of the shadow of the great demon, were terribly dangerous: but Linden Jr. had shown that the paraslit could be mastered, could be persuaded like any pokémon, provided a demon master was there to begin the dialogue. But something like the nosfearat… remained to be seen. Moriko regretted not bringing Linden along.

They flew north, the pokémon cutting away the air from in front of them and rushing forward into the unknown. Moriko clipped herself in to nap in the saddle while Liona did all the work. Karaxil was a long, glittering shadow ahead of them as the frosty ground gave way to solid ice.

Ice at the top of the world, where winter never ended. On Terra the North Pole was sea ice, flat aside from heaves and polynyas, but on Gaia there was a scattered mass of islands under the ice. The territory enclosed by the Ursian Circle at 66°N was unincorporated territory sometimes given the unofficial regional name Arktos. There had been talks of setting up an extreme gym challenge nearby at one time but it had been judged unlikely to be much utilized and probably damaging to the fragile ecosystem.

There were pokémon living this far north, as they seemed to no matter how extreme the environment, but they were particularly shy and wild, having had little contact with humans. Engaging them was discouraged since they might interpret a battle as a fight to the death, and because they might represent the last vestiges of pre-human-contact pokémon intelligence available for scientific study.

Mountains covered by ice, glittering like a crown, appeared ahead of them. It was spring but this land would never know it—

"Moriko, ground ten o'clock," Liona told her.

The pokémon were nearly invisible in their white coats; instead it was their long shadows that caught the eye, loping across the ice.

"Tell Polaris's pokémon," she said. "Let's follow discreetly."

The arctic pokémon were good runners and tireless: they were a pair of wintris and an antepard, running toward a ridge. Before long they'd disappeared into dark mouths in the ice.

"Polaris says to hover," Liona reported, and Moriko agreed.

They watched the ridge, Moriko filming with her pokédex, but there was no more activity, and there didn't seem to be nearby flying pokémon. A scout hiding in the direction of the sun was a favorite ranger trick, but they seemed to be clear of hidden watchers.

They landed nearby, Karaxil joining them.

"The energy trail continues," the demon murmured. "Whomsoever attacked your settlements is there."

Moriko watched the caves uneasily. Enclosed spaces like that were the worst to fight in; human soldiers had been cut to pieces in nasty traps in tunnels probably since war had been invented, to say nothing of a student pokémon ranger who intended to pursue police actions and not heroic/stupid frontal assaults.

"I will go first," Karaxil said, and Polaris laughed and slapped its side. Moriko stared at him, shocked.

"Moriko is thinking about all the ways she's been taught she'll get killed in close quarters battling," Polaris told it, "and here you're volunteering to die first."

Karaxil pulled back its lips in one of the ironic grins that pokémon did, knowing about the human smile, but wanting to remind the viewer what baring the teeth meant. It had a lot of them.

"I have fought gods," it said. "Follow."

x.x.x.x.x

The auroraboros rapidly outpaced them despite its large size, but Polaris didn't seem to be concerned. Moriko followed his lead through the tunnels.

"These are boreannid holes," Polaris explained, casting his pokédex around at the crystalline walls. "It's an ice worm pokémon, fairly rare."

"Uh. Are they home?"

"No, if they were the tunnels would be totally smooth," he said, pointing at their feet. Their spiked boots crunched through a debris of ice chips and gravel. "We'd be slipping even with crampons. They're long gone, there's too much crap on the ground."

Inside the ice ridge there was evidence of fierce industry: the floor of the boreannid tunnels was scoured by rock and metal. As they drew on, the pale ice receded here and there to reveal rock tunnels, or was stained by dark oil and hydrocarbon dust. Surely no human being had been up this far to try to seriously prospect, let alone mine, when you could find sweet crude and fist-sized gold nuggets walking around near the equator with a mai tai in one hand and an aura reader in the other.

But pokémon could draw energy from mining, like the oxhaust at the steel mill—the mineral energies were there, and water and dark, and sometimes fire, poison, or acid. Fossil fuels even had a whisper of plant-type energy in them still. But it was _aged_ energy, whatever that meant to pokémon, and wasn't always quite edible. Better were the nuggets of crystallized energy in an easily consumable state that trainers called rare candy, or evolution stones if they matched a particular type matrix. Perhaps that was what they were looking for, and the coal was just gangue.

Seeing the oil, though, Moriko had a dreadful thought: what about darkwater, that strange liquid ghost-type energy that seemed to feed Ituras? Did anyone mine _it_?

_That was just oil back there_, Vleridin told her. _There was no ghost-type energy on it_.

How _did_ the Gray Prince collect darkwater? It seemed to have been—to be—his pursuit, as the Black Queen had followed him from place to place all over the world. Moriko remembered her consulting with professors to try to find his next location; the Black Queen didn't know his criteria, either. Maybe _he_ didn't know.

Moriko had stolen a small amount of the darkwater, once—had others, before or since? Could you disguise it as a hydrocarbon and ship or trade it?

They moved through the tunnels as quietly as they could, stopping and stilling as aura radar picked up distant energy signatures that faded in and out of range. Only Karaxil was ahead of them consistently; perhaps it was driving off wild pokémon ahead of it. Then again, maybe it was ringing every possible alarm.

The tunnel opened into a huge cavern, its ceiling lost in cold condensation while massive ice stalactites and pillars stabbed through the space. Moriko and Polaris moved slowly to try to scout the cave without being seen past the rim of the tunnel mouth. There was movement deeper in the cavern, pokémon or animals with white winter coats, and—

Moriko's heart raced as she caught a glimpse of a familiar sight: in the center of the cavern was a circular depression with a raised dais. The depression was filled with black, shining liquid.

Darkwater.

Her eyes kept going, as if pulled, and she looked beyond the pool into the depths of the cave.

Far away was a huge, dull purple pokémon, six-limbed and banded with gray iron armor.

It was Ituras.

x.x.x.x.x

: ) Thanks for reading, there's an illustration of Auroraboros's recovered forme on my deviantart/tumblr.


	3. The Dragon

III. The Dragon

_In the land of my mother, beneath the dark pines, there is silence  
In the land of my mother, beneath the dark ice, there are secrets_

After her initial shock, Moriko was surprised to find that she wasn't scared. She was angry as _shit_, though.

Ituras—the Gray Prince—had almost killed Russ, once her best human friend. Its servants had hurt him, maybe permanently. She hadn't spoken to him for two years.

Ituras had hurt Matt, maybe permanently.

Ituras's servants had hurt her. A demon called the Spirit of Wrath had killed her parents and tried to kill her.

Pokémon rangers and PRED had almost killed it, and here it was, hiding away again to recover. It was weak.

It was an opportunity.

If the demon god didn't have the good grace to die, it could rot under the care of pokémon scientists.

But normal pokéballs couldn't catch gods unless they wanted, for some reason, to be caught, and a couple of trainers, even good ones, would need far more preparation than she and Polaris had come in with to fight even a weakened mythical like Ituras.

Moriko's hands and teeth itched, and she knew what Vleridin was feeling, looking out at the sleeping or unconscious demon from her eyes.

The ensouled mooskeg laughed. _We are bold, are we not, planning deicide?_

Moriko smiled to herself. _There will be time._ But it enraged her to have Ituras escape again. With her career change it was a matter of professional pride, not just a personal desire for justice.

Could rangers or Pan-Regional Elemental Defense soldiers get here in time?

Polaris was watching her. "I get the feeling you know what's going on," he said, nearly inaudibly.

"They're collecting darkwater. It's all darkwater. It's… blood. To make _it_ powerful," she whispered, indicating the motionless purple bulk of Ituras. "It's the demon god. It was… split up by the other gods a thousand years ago or whatever, but they still couldn't kill it, just bury the pieces. Every time it absorbs more it gets more powerful. What it did at Lacuna wasn't even its full power."

Polaris nodded; he ran his hands over his pokéball belt and frowned. "Is your nigriff your only flying pokémon?"

"Thana—my oberant can fly, but carrying me isn't a great flight."

"I want to send a flier after the pokémon that are collecting the black blood—I want to know where from, and I want to destroy or steal it. It gets more powerful when it gets more, so it's not going to get some."

"I think we need to tell the rangers. And PRED," Moriko reminded him. "Let them do it."

Polaris grimaced. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right." He flipped open his pokédex. "No service. Surprise."

Finally, Polaris entrusted his aura monitor and its high-quality scans to his delibird, who waddled away and down the tunnel.

"…Are you sure about her?"

"The thing about delibird is that you don't see them coming," Polaris said, grinning widely. "Myra is a totally harmless and helpful pokémon that no one would prey on. Right?"

"We're in a _demon lair_, Polaris."

"_No one_."

"…Let's concentrate on finding the villagers. Can we get through here?"

The pokémon further down weren't white after all; their forms wavered, sections disappearing or changing color until what was left was gray and doll-like while their shadows kept walking. Finally the shadow flowed up onto the quadrupedal forms, leaving them so black that they seemed two-dimensional.

_Cryptidex mode initiated. Aura analysis: dark- and normal-type, 60% certainty, dark- and ice-type, 30% certainty, dark-type, 10% certainty. __Reduce range to increase certainty. Possible match:__ Eidolost, the silhouette pokémon. It is said to play tricks on others and to steal from them, and feed off their confusion and fright. Its shadow is the real body. __Initiate full scan and upload? (Y/N) Error: No service. Scans will be uploaded when connected to pokédex service._

Flat or not, they had interior space, because one by one they were approaching the dais and vomiting up darkwater to add to the mass in the pool.

Not all of them came willingly; a few had been bound with techniques and were struggling against vines or steel bands or the claws of the others. Eventually they were dragged over and lined up next to the pool.

Moriko wondered which of the pokémon were more susceptible to the darkwater's effects: the ones who were obediently delivering it, or the ones who were fighting to get away. The darkwater had lowered Russ's inhibitions, leading to a number of memorable nights where he'd partied far beyond what was wise or even humanly possible. It had been a far cry from his wallflower days only a few weeks before, at the end of high school. But perhaps the darkwater had had a will of its own; Russ had also rushed them all north despite impending danger, north to where the Gray Prince happened to be.

Something on the ceiling stirred, and the eidolost all froze, heads upturned. Great wings twitched as a long, scaled body appeared, reaching for the ground. Its wings were patterned with stars, nebulae, moons that shimmered against a night-black background. It extended its antennae toward the bound pokémon ever so slightly, and suddenly they were all bleeding darkwater into the pool.

"Take them to recover," it said, in a voice like the void between worlds or the hard light of the stars.

One by one the silhouette pokémon skittered out of the cavern, and the huge pokémon was left alone, rearing over the darkwater pool.

_Cryptidex mode activated. Aura analysis: cosmic- and light-type, 70% certainty. Cosmic- and ice-type, 15% certainty. Light- and ice-type, 15% certainty. __Reduce range to increase certainty. __No matches. _

"Come out, then, cousin," it said. "I see you hiding there."

Moriko and Polaris jumped as Karaxil, Demon of Frost and Starlight, slithered out from between the cracks in the ice nearby, its coat shimmering and its wedge-shaped head turning toward the other. Moriko had judged it recovered since the first time she'd seen it imprisoned under a mountain, but she realized the auroraboros was missing something compared to the other demon. Karaxil had atrophied; the other had been growing, absorbing energy, even if it had mostly slept away the years like legendaries did.

"I name you, Acherix, Night's Empress," Karaxil said. "Hail, cousin."

"A trifle rude, cousin," the Night's Empress replied. "You are much diminished since last we spoke."

"The world burned when last we spoke," Karaxil said, its coils bunching up behind it as it seemed to ready itself for some movement, or just for comfort. Its claws scratched at the rock, carefully not touching the darkwater pool.

"And it shall again," the other demon said, pleased. "Come you to rejoin the master?"

"I tried to kill the master, as I think thou well know'st," Karaxil said sharply. "Why dost thou serve it still?"

"Oh, I have no especial love for the old god! But the world is out of balance; it hath been so for aeons. _Thou_ know'st it, or wouldst, if thou hadst not moldered under rock these many years."

"When it lost they caught me and bound me with spirit and iron," Frost said. "I wandered from dream to dream unseeing, useless. Do you this and it will lose again, and they shall catch you and leave you, too, to die there far from light of sun or moon or star."

"It must be done. What must be done? I know not, and the stars answer not," the Night's Empress said, climbing back up to its perch, scales scraping on the ice. "I know only that the imbalance is vast, and action taken must be vaster still. What great work could I make my aim? And so I chose the grandest task I could think of. I shall remake the god who was sundered."

"The god died. That thing is but a shadow."

"Oh, cousin, who ever heard of a god who really died? One can always bring them back. Even _they_ could not destroy it, truly, but hide the blood and leave the fitful shades to wander until the end of the age. The world hath been wrong since it died, wronger still since the humans came. They sit in their cities and bond with minor sparks and think themselves masters of fire. They are fools, and we should show them so. Come, cousin!"

"It will never be the same. What good will it do?"

"I know not," the Empress cackled. "We shall see when it is done! The stars turn and the motion of the planets is meaningless. It amuses me to do. What other reason need I?"

"Hast thou never thought of doing something _useful_?"

The Empress rounded on the Demon. "Use! _Use_! Listen to thy words, cousin! Is it _useful_? Is it _economic_? Like some crawling ant thou art, fearful of the rain and the change of the season! We were lords, and we were mighty! Thou art grown weak there under stone, weak and feeble!"

"I did grow weak," Karaxil said bitterly. "Though not feeble—I learned we could change. That there is great power in bonding with a human being. I have witnessed elementals of terrible power, bonded—and that it could be extended to demons, withal."

The Night's Empress laughed in its face. "My poor mad cousin. You should remain here after I raise the god; stay you here and rest for a few centuries, and enjoy our results thereafter. Your wits are broken."

"_Thou_ art mad, to pursue this destruction to no reward from a broken master."

"Poor, poor cousin. Art thou hungry? There are sleepers in the caves beyond, brought by my servants." Its antennae waved. "Though I sense thou hast brought thine own meals. Perchance I shall steal them from thee."

Karaxil snarled and dove after the Empress. They wove around one another, long bodies rising and falling, and the Demon struck out with its segmented legs and then with beams of ice and light, glittering with auroral energy.

The air shimmered as the Empress's weirdly human hands moved, summoning cosmic-type energy, and black portals of nothing sucked up the auroraboros's attacks, only to reopen and redirect them. The beams scythed along Karaxil's body, altered by their passage through nothingness, and left dark afterimages.

Ice stalactites fell from the ceiling as they battled, exploding into shrapnel, and Moriko and Polaris fled back down the tunnel they came in.

"I didn't completely understand the Empress, but it mentioned sleepers," Moriko said as they hurried. "The villagers?"

"That's my guess," Polaris agreed. "Can any of your pokémon track human minds? Sometimes psychics can learn how."

"No, I'm supposed to catch or trade for a teleporter this summer if I can."

"Hopefully it's Celebi and you'll come back in time to help us," Polaris said lightly. "Atropos can't, so we'll need to do it the old-fashioned way."

They froze as they nearly walked into more eidolost, but the demons missed or ignored them, burbling urgently to one another. They were headed back toward the cave with the Empress, perhaps to help it battle.

"This place is a maze," Polaris muttered. "Let's go the _other_ way."

They followed the tunnel the eidolost had come from, the ice growing rougher and older, and they started to find castoff human artifacts: clothing tags, bits of plastic wrapper, bobby pins, and other debris.

"Breadcrumbs," Polaris said.

They followed the bits of garbage as much as possible as they came to fork after fork in the caves. Their trail marks, scratched into the stone walls, proved invaluable as they backtracked over and over. Moriko was keeping track of the paths on her pokédex, and had to increase the drawing size as the map grew more and more elaborate. Faint booms from the demons' battle sounded through the caves, which they hoped was far behind them.

"I did a rescue where the tunnels changed shape behind us," Polaris whispered, "thanks to the froslass that controlled the cave. That could have been very bad if we hadn't been monitoring the path and the aura readouts."

"I _really _hope it's not a trap," Moriko whispered back uneasily.

"I doubt it—worse, I think it's a larder," Polaris answered.

The ice ran out as they went deeper on into the mountain; Moriko felt faintly dizzy from all the twists and turns, and exhausted by the turnbacks and blind alleys. Finally, a wide cavern greeted them with icemelt trickling into a pool in the corner, and Moriko's heart leapt with excitement and dread as they saw the furs and synthetic jackets of the missing villagers.

There were a couple dozen of them, lying haphazardly around the chamber. Polaris immediately threw down a couple of pokéballs, revealing his hexx and an olorant, who set up Safeguard barriers around the victims. Thankfully, the villagers all began waking under the influence of the negating technique—but some of them were weak indeed.

"We have to get them out," Polaris said, low. "I'm going to teleport the ones who can't walk. The others will need to be led. Atropos can only do so many ports."

Moriko nodded. "I'll get them out." _I'll try_, she thought.

The cavern rumbled, far-off.

Just rousing the villagers proved a major task: it had been easier after Sere Island with medics present and later more medical personnel who had taken charge of the knocked-out islanders. Every person seemed to go through the same slow confusion and ask the same questions; it was maddening with demon pokémon somewhere nearby, to say nothing of Frost and the Empress fighting. But Moriko tried to follow Polaris's example, speaking to each person patiently; he even knew many of their names.

The pokémon every adult and child had on their belts were waking up too, and soon the cave was filled with pokémon cries and psychic communication loud enough to wake the dead. Atropos the hexx finally put an end to it with a sharp Follow Me technique. High-level pokémon attacks worked on humans too, and Moriko had to fight to tear her eyes away.

"Quiet, now, and stay with your partners," Atropos announced sternly. "They need our help to get out."

Polaris and Atropos began directing the villagers who weren't recovering well, and teleported the first pair out.

Moriko addressed the remainder. "This is Vleridin," she said, introducing the mooskeg. "She's going to lead us out. I'm going to bring up the rear. Polaris is going to keep teleporting that group out, but the rest of us have to leg it. Ready?"

It was insane, but somehow the villagers were nodding and looking to her instead of going "She's just a kid! We need the leader!"

There was another rumble, and a moment later a wave of fresher, colder air rolled over them. Had Karaxil and the other demon broken open the cavern? She hoped they'd fly up and away and fight outside, and that she could lead the villagers out without resistance. Hoped, anyway.

Vleridin led them through the tunnels—swiftly at first, and then slower as it became clear that the groggy villagers couldn't keep up. They had winter clothing on, but the extended Hypnosis had left a toll on them. Moriko had experienced something similar once, and the attendant doctor had put her through her neurological paces before she'd been cleared to leave town.

Moriko could only grit her teeth as Vleridin reported catching glimpses of fleeing eidolost. To tell others, no doubt, and here she was at the rear of a bunch of bumblers and their confused and squawky pokémon. Tarahn padded silently behind her, watchful. She was beginning to doubt Polaris's judgement, but there was nothing for it: she had to get out, she had to get the people out, and only Vleridin could lead them with her energy senses.

The first of the attackers struck from the rear: Tarahn turned heartbeats before and filled the tunnel with Electroweb, and the unlucky demons at the fore walked right into it. He followed up with a Thunder Wave, the pulses of paralyzing energy bursting on the eidolost as they struggled in the web. It was bizarre to see their false bodies in the shape of antepard and wintris writhe on nothing while the shadows were the part that truly caught.

"Give them Poison Spikes too!" Moriko called.

She hurled pokéballs at the trapped eidolost. One bounced off its target's false body and missed, but the other struck the true shadow and pinged. Tarahn yanked it back with a quick Magnet Pull.

The demons yowled, disorganized and treading on the barbs of the poison-type hazard. The rearward ranks pushed forward heedlessly onto the trap moves, only for their comrades to rush forward next and fall prey to the same or shove those who had just escaped back into the web's sticky strands. Moriko threw another couple of pokéballs and snagged another one, and they all howled at the disappearance. Tarahn fired off another Electroweb and the two of them retreated, catching up with the villagers.

So far the basic principles of fighting wild pokémon were holding: they were disorganized, unwilling to commit to attacks, bluff-charging and breaking off, and they could be held off with crowd-disrupting techniques. She didn't entertain the thought that she'd really _caught_ the ones in the pokéballs, but their disappearance demoralized the remainder, and their fainted spirits couldn't return to a waiting cleric pokémon to be healed for another go. If they wanted a trainer, she was always willing, but somehow she suspected they owed their loyalty to something else already.

Up ahead Vleridin bellowed and ice cracked as she used Rootbind attacks—Moriko could taste the plant-type energy—and two of the villager pokémon helped her with Aurora Beams and Early Frost attacks.

_Immobilize them and go past if you can—we'll take over._

_Please, I've got them,_ Vleridin said smugly, but Moriko had Tarahn fill the temporarily-empty leg of tunnel with hazards anyway.

They were taking the long way around, avoiding the main cavern where the legendaries were. They started to encounter minor passages too small for adults that seemed to go in the right direction, but Vleridin led them past, keeping more or less toward the south and the exit.

They were even avoiding the demon pokémon, but it was too good to be true—eventually Vleridin stopped mid-tunnel and hissed at the villagers to stay back.

_Problem?_ Moriko asked her.

_Gods all damn it_, she replied. _Come and see_.

Moriko pushed through the crowd—fear was bouncing from person to person like lightning the longer they were stopped—and then the aura from the obstacle around the bend hit her, meager as her senses were.

What felt like _all_ the demon pokémon were waiting for them up ahead.

"Fuck," Moriko muttered. "We'll, we'll—"

"There is another way out," Vleridin murmured. "But it intersects with this path. They may simply pursue us and cut off exits until we're trapped."

"You need a diversion."

"I _will_ come with you—"

"No."

"Moriko—"

"Only you know the way! Only you can see the way to get them out! Lead them out and then come back for me. Okay?"

Vleridin swore and stamped a hoof, leaving a crater in the ice. "The gods save me from fools—"

Moriko turned to face the villagers. "There's a big one up ahead," she said. "You need to follow Vleridin out another way. I'm staying."

The headwoman looked like she wanted to say something, but Moriko raised her eyebrows. "Feeling heroic?"

"You need help," she said quietly.

"I'm trained for this, and my pokémon are too. _Please_."

A couple of the kids were crying silently already, and the headwoman seemed to realize the danger of a panic. She called to the group to follow in another language, and Moriko watched them trickle away behind Vleridin.

"Here we go," Moriko whispered, throwing down Thana's pokéball.

The oberant rushed the waiting eidolost, startling them and leaving behind a cloud of Distraction Dust that swirled into dragon's heads and looming figures. Several of the eidolost backed off, crowding their fellows, while one screeched indignantly and charged through the dust.

It and the others that followed hit the traps Tarahn had just finished setting up, pulses of electrical energy firing and then bursts of poison sludge. As they turned to retreat they found themselves walking on Poison Spikes; the spikes didn't actually hurt the eidolost's false bodies, but the resulting squirts of poison fell onto their hidden shadows. The fake bodies had mass and took up space, though, and the tunnel dissolved into confusion as the demons breaking free from Thana's Distraction Dust lurched forward and ran into their own allies.

Thana followed up with a Dazzling Gleam that filled the tunnel with light pink fairy-type energy, and Tarahn fired off bolts of electricity into the mix.

"I just love it when a plan comes together," the raigar told Moriko brightly.

"You jinxed it," Moriko said, fond, but her breath caught as she sensed something else coming up the tunnel. "Come back!" she barked.

Tarahn and Thana fell back, standing protectively on either side of her, but the eidolost didn't follow; in fact, they seemed to be milling around in confusion, squeaking to one another.

They were saying something like "_The Elder_!"

All at once the demons melted away, and something else moved into view.

In the tunnel loomed a tall, thin figure. It was emaciated and yet potbellied, the tendons all standing out under its thin skin, its mouth slightly open to reveal pointed teeth. It wore a ruff of bone and pine boughs, and it raised its sunken eyes to look at Moriko.

_Cryptidex mode initiated. Aura analysis: ice- and ghost-type, 85% certainty. Ice- and dark-type_, _15% certainty. Reduce range to increase certainty. (WARNING: HIGH LEVEL DO NOT APPROACH UNLESS FAINTED) Possible match: whitikhan, the starving pokémon. In mythology, it was created by famine caused by greed. The more it eats, the more its body grows, so it will never be satisfied._

The whitikhan watched her, its breath whistling.

"Face me, demon," she told it, trying to make herself feel regal and competent. She threw down Rufus' pokéball, the oxhaust's bulk filling up the tunnel as he reformed.

"This is a demon, Ru," she to him. "Are you ready?"

Rufus straightened with a bellows-breath of air, his internal flames glowing, and he looked up the tunnel at the whitikhan. "Easy work," he grunted, shifting into a battle stance.

The whitikhan advanced on all fours, its too-long limbs leaving its knees and elbows high in the air. Moriko recalled Tarahn and Thana to protect them from area effects; she might need them yet.

"_Fool slave_," the demon said. Its voice was like an early frost or a late one. It sounded like hunger. "_You serve the wrong master_."

Rufus snorted, flames flaring, and tossed his head in invitation and challenge.

The whitikhan attacked Moriko instead, her pokédex screaming an aura warning as shadow feelers shot out from it and swiped at her. She hurled herself out of the way, but it wasn't only aiming for her body; she felt long cold scratches as if on her heart, on her marrow, and stumbled as a chunk of her energy was stolen. Rufus bellowed and charged the demon as she stumbled further down the tunnel, acutely aware of her blind spots.

Fire lit the tunnel; Moriko threw down Ganny's pokéball. No point in playing fair if their opponent wasn't. The emboar threw up a Heat Shield to protect her.

"Ach! What has it done to you?" Ganny asked.

Moriko was growing dizzy—_hungry_, in fact, her stomach doing the flip-flop of crashing blood sugar—and she gritted her teeth as her vision wavered.

"I'll get better," she said. "Can you watch the rearward?"

"Of course," Ganny said, positioning himself to block the tunnel. "The legendaries are still fighting," he said over his shoulder, "but away. In the air, I think."

"Thanks, Ganny." Moriko had fiddled through her pockets and pulled out an electrolyte capsule that she dry-swallowed. "Can you feel Polaris?"

"Not specifically. But I sense humans… and teleportation."

"We haven't lost yet. They need a little longer. Rufus! Fire Spin!"

The oxhaust had been trying to grapple with the demon, but the whitikhan was too agile, attacking from afar—Rufus had enough sense not to be drawn away from their stand, at least. He obeyed Moriko, summoning the spinning ring of fire. He was unpracticed with it, though, managing only a small ring that the whitikhan broke out of quickly, sending up waves of jagged ice up the tunnel.

Moriko grit her teeth again—if he'd been at school with them, he'd have been able to make a Fire Spin as big as a house or small but white-hot—and told him to shuffle backward. Meanwhile the whitikhan was pelting him with ice shards and shadow tendrils, draining his energy. This couldn't go on.

"Rufus!" Moriko called. "At a distance!"

He stopped, crouching, and for a moment nothing happened. The whitikhan fired off a couple of Shadow Balls that burst into purple unlight on Rufus' armor, and started to charge up a maximum power one.

Moriko gasped, grabbing Liona's pokéball off her belt. He wasn't going to last through more direct hits. _I'm sorry, Ru… you need training. And it's my fault that you don't—_

_Moriko… help me._

She was the fish; she was the pool; she was both. Behind her, fire; before her, fire; beyond him, shadow.

_In me, there is… the forest._

Green hair, hunter's eyes. Moriko extended a vine—not a wave, not her soul's heart, but just a hand, thrown in aid.

The whitikhan watched her, wreathed in shadow, and it laughed at her clumsy display.

Then it was screeching as a pillar of fire burst to life in its pine-bough ruff.

_Green_ fire.

Rufus exploded ahead with a Flame Charge, ice barrier shards flying, and caught the whitikhan a titanic blow with a Fire Punch. Its aura readouts on Moriko's pokédex were just guesses, but they'd dropped precipitously.

The whitikhan Faded Out, trying to escape, but Ganny's Fire Spin erupted around it, trapping it in this plane and the elemental one. It skittered from side to side, probing the trough side of the Fire Spin energy wave, and finally burst out.

It rounded on Moriko.

She hit it with an anti-pokémon charge. The electrified net exploded out, clamping onto its skeletal face, and she turned, tossing the empty cartridge away, and ran down the tunnel behind Rufus.

The oxhaust snorted a jet of nearly-invisible blue fire, angry. He advanced on it.

The whitikhan's long body lay curled up like a dead spider, and it watched Rufus with its sunken black eyes as he approached.

"_You serve the wrong master_," it said again.

"Why do you serve Ituras?" Moriko demanded. "I watched it pay back his servants once: the Gray—its human host, it left starving and wasted, and it killed a paraslit. Why? Why suffer for it?"

The whitikhan's thin chest heaved. "_Who among us does not suffer? We all know hunger. We all know loss. We all know defeat. We all know death. But through the master we shall be more._"

"You did lose," Rufus said. "An' you'll lose every time you try to hurt my friend."

The whitikhan hissed, and Rufus Iron Punched it into the ground one more time.

Moriko tossed an ultra ball at it, the advanced pokéball casting a wider and more powerful capture net than the standard, and Rufus picked it up when it stopped moving.

"Nice work, Ru." Her heart hurt, for many reasons.

He grunted, handing her the pokéball. "You gonna train it?"

She shook her head. "No, can you imagine it ever listening? Demons get turned over to Prof. Maple."

"Excellent work, my students!" Ganny called to them. "Perhaps you would care to"—he grunted—"render me assistance?"

A pack of eidolost had sneaked up behind them, but with the defeat of the whitikhan they were wholly disorganized. Rufus and Ganny's Flamethowers were enough to scare them off back into the tunnels.

"Can you see Vleridin?" she asked Ganny, her own nascent energy sense helpless in the confusion and adrenaline.

"I cannot. But… I think I see a way out."

The tunnels were quiet; they saw no more demons, and felt or heard no referred attacks from Karaxil and the Night's Empress, their battle over or moved off.

Still. Moriko walked quickly, Ganny trotting alongside her and Rufus's breath loud in the silence.

Her heart leapt when she saw daylight at last, and Vleridin's silhouette in the cave mouth was welcome indeed. The mooskeg fussed over her, lipping her hair, and she hugged her neck. Moriko turned back to Rufus and took his hand, too.

Polaris had led the villagers to the shelter of a ridge nearby; it was meager protection against a pokémon attack, but it was better than the featureless plain and something of a windbreak. He rushed forward, seeing them approaching, and he clasped Moriko's hands warmly.

"Moriko… I can't thank you enough," he said, proud and not a little relieved.

She nodded. "Let's bring your seconds, next time," she said dryly.

Polaris laughed. "My seconds will be telling me that, too, when we get home."

"Don't jinx it." Moriko looked at the clear sky. "Where is Karaxil?"

"It will have to fight its own battle," Polaris said. "The incoming rangers know about it, but it's passed off my pokédex range."

"Vleridin?"

"I have not sensed them for some time," the mooskeg said.

"They—oh my gods. What about Ituras?"

x.x.x.x.x

An empty cavern, back in the demon pokémon's hideout. The aura of the residual energy was black, grimy, used—but the demon god was gone, and the cave was full of twisting and confused ghost-type energy trails. More sophisticated aura detectors or elder aura-sensing pokémon could probably tease it out eventually, but all Moriko saw on her pokédex was a scribble of dark purple lines, while Vleridin and Ganny sneezed and bickered.

No, Moriko remembered that Ituras could use Phantom Force to travel rapidly through shadow. It had always been skilled at running and hiding, unless the Black Queen was the one bad at finding, as Moriko had sometimes darkly suspected.

She was angry, angry at herself for being too weak neutralize the elder demons; angry at PRED for being too slow; angry at the Black Queen for not killing Ituras decades ago; but she couldn't say she was surprised.

The Black Queen and the Gray Prince had ascended to legend, joining the legendary pokémon in a seasonality that spanned decades rather than years. Moriko had not seen the Black Queen in two years, but having seen the demon god, she wondered if she would again.

She hoped both of them would stay far, far away.

She wished _all _this demon shit would stay far, far away. But she'd see it again, inevitably. Rangers kept humans and pokémon safe from the things that went bump in the night. The demons' greatest weapon, even beyond their ability to prey on humans, had always been their ability to maintain secrecy: to strike in darkness, to confuse guardian pokémon, to influence minds, and even to somehow silence their living victims.

But Moriko knew, now, about what had happened to Matt, and presumably dozens of others; and Ituras had acted to put thousands of people in danger instead of just a scattered few. The trap had to be tightening; people _knew_.

Still. It had been a chase over a century, if the rumors about the Black Queen were true. The solution might be on that order of years, too.

Moriko couldn't help waiting anxiously for Karaxil even as the ranger jumpcraft were landing. It was a strange feeling, thinking of it as an ally, but it had proved itself several times over. It had had the chance to rejoin the other demons and refused. Maybe humans were the only faction that hadn't mistreated it.

Moriko reminded herself that legendaries with multi-thousand-year lifetimes could play a long-ass con indeed. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" was playing with fire even with comprehensible humans, let alone ancient intelligences like a legendary pokémon.

There were other things to worry about: the pokéballs on her belt containing the whitikhan and the eidolost felt as heavy as lead. She worried what thoughts were passing between them; if they could figure out how to self-open the capture balls; and whether they were already draining her energy. An aggressive drain would be obvious, but who knew what kinds of subtle vitality theft they were capable of.

_They are quiescent_, Vleridin told her. _They will feel my hooves if not._

Moriko told Vleridin how she had managed to connect energetically, properly, with Rufus, and vowed to practice more when they had time.

_Good! You are learning something from me at last._

Moriko got cold at that. _You will lose yourself_, she'd been told, about ensouling.

Had she learned? Or had Vleridin-Moriko bled further together?

Would she be able to tell?

x.x.x.x.x

: ) Thanks for reading! There's a picture of the Night's Empress up on my deviantart/tumblr, **gaiienpokedex**.

**FAQ**

**Q:** Keleri why did you have the demons lapse into Early Modern English

**Short A:** Because you can't rudely _thou*_ someone in Modern Western Canadian English anymore and that's a shame. If yeh don't like it my son we can have a tilly about it there eh b'y

**Long A:** They don't liiiiiiiiterally speak EME so much as- well, all the pokemon speech in the story is a translation. No pokemon has spoken modern english in the story except for the mewtwos in G&D over the radio. Even all the modern english dialogue in the story is a translation because english in the year-of-our-Arceus 2207 is going to sound different than that in 2019, the way that the dialogue in "Some Like It Hot" (1939) sounds rapid-fire and bouncy today in 2019.** Technically EME isn't even old enough given the demons' pedigree, they should be speaking entirely in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse but I'm not that hardcore.

Anyway, tl;dr a couple of evil grandparents are fighting in that scene and I wanted their dialogue to sound sufficiently grandparent-y.

This is what I could pick up from reading Shakespeare in high school and flipping through the KJV as well as trying to consult actual grammar guides, so if you're a scholar of English and want to offer corrections please feel free.

*Singular-you in English used to be "thou", but you also used "plural-you"*** to refer to others above you in station or to be polite, and "thou" for underlings or as an insult. When the demons switch second-person pronouns it's because they want to say "you idiot" instead of "you"

**Maybe, the internet and mass media may have ruined this

***Plural-you in English has been replaced by "y'all"


	4. Eight

IV. Eight

_Don't stop us now, the moment of truth  
We were born to make history _

_June 9th–10th, 130 CR _

"I'm not sure I can exaggerate what _utter stupidity_ it was to go into that situation with only a gym leader and yourself, to say nothing of _another demon pokémon_!" Captain Lark, Moriko's mentor, restrained his voice from rising to a shriek only with great effort. "What were you thinking? No, literally, explain your train of thought to me."

Moriko kept her temper in check as best she could. "It happened so fast—the villagers were in trouble—Polaris wanted to go ahead and I trusted him. And we can trust—" Moriko winced. "In that moment I felt the auroraboros wasn't a danger to us," she amended. "It hates Ituras too."

"Moriko," Captain Lark said. "One: Do not put yourself in mortal danger to save someone else. That just means two bodies."

"Yes, sir."

"Two: you cannot trust a wild pokémon. I trust _my_ pokémon with my life, because I've lived and worked with them for years. You cannot fully understand the mindset or culture of a wild pokémon, _let alone_ an ancient and alien legendary like the auroraboros."

"But we—the diplomats—"

"I know! I know. We make deals and deal diplomatically with wild pokémon all the time. And it's a whole class and specialization _because_ it's not easy.

"Three: Polaris was an idiot and you shouldn't have followed him, even if he ordered you to under his purview as a protector of the region, even if he begged you and cried. You have to know when _not_ to go in as a ranger, too."

"Yes, sir," Moriko said, teeth gritted.

"That's my advice to you as your teacher. Lecture over. You won today, kid. Keep winning."

She exhaled. "Yessir. How was the mantine?"

"Rotting into sludge in Siroy Bay. No lives lost, just a lot of insurance claims. Asspats and booze all around. We could have used your friend Irampus or whatever its name was, it pulled a good trick back in Gaiien that time."

"I'll ask for the next one."

Lark snorted. "Field school starts on the fifteenth. Get your ass back to Hoenn before then, or, fuck it, meet us in Unova if you want. Just tell the coordinator or he'll lodge himself so far up my ass he'll be poking around my tonsils."

"Is the schedule the same?"

"No, it's fucked. But we'll figure it out."

"Take it easy, Captain."

x.x.x.x.x

**YOU THERE. HUMAN.**

Moriko nearly dropped the pans she was holding, and she stopped and scurried out of the Sastruga Inn kitchen.

_Vleridin, who is—_

**Human. Listen to me, human.**

_What have you to say, demon? _Vleridin said, cutting across the whitikhan's insistent tones.

Moriko gripped her trainer belt like it was a tightening noose. _What do you want?_

**Free me**, the whitikhan said.

_No._

_No,_ Vleridin agreed.

It spoke to her again after dinner, as she was helping clean up.

**You humans are latecomers. You do not know the way of things.**

Moriko heard Vleridin snort in her mind. _Probably. What _is_ the way of things?_

**There are gods. We serve them. You, lesser beings, should serve them.**

_We do not worship gods, _Moriko told it, repeating something she'd heard once. _We put them to work._

This time she felt the ripple of anger from the whitikhan, and yet more anger at its own helplessness.

**What are you? You come here and cut trees, break the earth, delve deep, uncover secrets in air and water, blaspheme.**

_Funny to hear a demon care about blasphemy, _Moriko told it. She sprayed down a table with cleaner.

**You are not of the cycle. You will kill this world as you did your old one.**

"You know about Terra, huh?" she muttered aloud.

**Even now you are killing it. You kill those who do not serve you. As you will kill me. As the One of Frost serves you. You spared it because it surrendered.**

_You won't die_, Moriko told it. But the comment about Terra had gotten to the core of her third-crossing guilt.

More than a century ago, the third crossing had come to Gaia, where pokémon lived, from Terra, where humans had evolved. And they'd left behind a world wrecked by climate change and ecological collapse. The leadership of the groups who had made the dimensional crossings had been united in their desire to preventing that from happening to humanity's new colony; Moriko's education had been heavy-handed in its attempts to instill the same values in her generation, and it had largely worked.

The input of pokémon and their easy, low-pollution energy made it all simple—but there were always unintended consequences. There were things about pokémon that humans didn't understand, and that pokémon themselves didn't. The grand experiment of humans and pokémon was still ongoing.

_I do not serve humans_, Vleridin told it. _You need not either_. _But you attacked them, you and your kind—what did you think would happen? If you attacked my herd I would have killed you. _

**That is Right. That is the Cycle. You do not desire my submission, only my death.**

_I have never encountered someone pleading for their _death, Vleridin said.

**Fool. Fool slave.**

_Same to you._

x.x.x.x.x

The Pan-Regional Elemental Defense had shown up to fully document the abductions and take all the credit, though they could have it as far as Moriko was concerned. A couple people were still missing, and Moriko thought about the 'larder' and felt cold and sick when she did. She hoped they'd be found.

Their best trackers couldn't say where the Empress or Ituras had gone more specifically than "west". There was hope that kind treatment and gifts might persuade the captured demon pokémon to reveal the higher demons' plans, if any. Moriko hadn't entirely understood the antique speech that the Empress and Frost had started firing at each other, but she'd got the feeling that the Empress _didn't_ have much of a plan. It just wanted to turn Ituras loose again and watch.

There was talk of sending flying tracker pokémon out to see if they could pick up the trail or gauge an emergence point and perhaps maximum range for Ituras's Phantom Force, but there were hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of wild and empty forest and tundra out there, satellite-mapped unincorporated territory that no human being had ever set foot on. They might lose a tracker and never know their fate. They'd be better off contacting the Black Queen, if anyone knew how.

A PRED technician set up the high-security pokéball transfer for Moriko at the Sastruga Pokémon Center, its ordinary system spliced open with the PRED addons and protocols. She watched the pokémon energy drawn out from each ball and transformed to light, agonizingly slowly, check after check to make sure the teleport was secure. It was one thing if the mafia or a phreaker intercepted your pidgey; the whitikhan, a killer pokémon, would be entirely a different matter.

On the other end, Prof. Maple confirmed receipt, and the monsters were blessedly out of Moriko's life.

That wasn't the end of it, of course; she was shadowed by PRED soldiers with guns and numerous holstered anti-pokémon handhelds, and utterly humorless soldier-pokémon, impossible to bribe with pokéblocks or poffins, as their scientists subjected her and her pokémon to intensive scans. They were looking for permanent damage or evidence of possession, or lingering drains on their auras. She couldn't use a pokédex due to its energy-sensing components, and she chafed at the long, boring confinement.

She was finally pronounced healthy and freed after a long debriefing with the PRED captain, a deceptively young-looking woman with an uxie partner who was plainly truth-testing everything Moriko said. But the uxie said nothing and she wasn't obliterated by a red laser from its forehead, so presumably they were satisfied with her account.

"You have good inborn ability, Trainer Moriko," the PRED captain said to her at the end. "PRED needs trainers like you, especially with ranger training. Feel free to call me when you're done your degree," she said, sending her contact information to Moriko's pokédex with a beep. "One question, though: you don't have eight badges?"

Moriko smiled, staring over the PRED captain's head.

x.x.x.x.x

It had been a long time since she'd done this.

Moriko climbed the ladder to the trainer box at her end of the Sastruga Gym's icy arena. It was filled with hazards: thin ice over freezing water, slick surfaces, jagged ice and stone. Polaris stood at the other end; she'd wondered if he had a costume, but he was in the same sweatshirt and shorts as the day she'd met him.

"Can you start us off, Tarahn?"

Tarahn appeared from his ball in yellow light and immediately skidded on the ice—not the best opening-battle omen. Polaris tossed out a crystal ball, the light blue glow resolving into another feline pokémon, an antepard.

_Antepard, the frostflame pokémon. Evolves from conflynx near level 33. An ice- and fire-type, an urban legend claims that they are blue and red in the Northern Hemisphere and red and blue in the Southern Hemisphere, but their polarity is random regardless of location._

Unlike Tarahn and his jester motif, the antepard was two-headed, and their body was split medially between their red fire and blue ice sides. The fire head sneered at Tarahn, while the ice head winked and waved a paw.

"Pokémon ready? Go!" called the league referee.

"Setup, Tarahn!"

"Hail, Blue."

Tarahn took off at a run, shaking Poison Spikes off the end of his tail, and his form rippling as he prepared a little something extra. The antepard exhaled an icy mist that rose above the battlefield and condensed into clouds, which began hurling golf-ball-sized chunks of ice at the ground.

"Next combo," Moriko said.

"You've got a system going," Polaris praised. "Keep it up. Frostbite!"

Tarahn delivered a pulsing Thunder Wave only to cut it off early as the antepard shot forward, both their heads' jaws glittering with ice-type energy. Tarahn leapt over his field of Poison Spikes and whirled to resume the Thunder Wave, although he flinched under a big Hailstone.

Blue growled and stumbled as the paralysis took effect, but their eyes glowed as they shot their double gaze toward the ceiling. Giant icicles made gunshot cracks as the antepard pulled them down remotely; Tarahn ran for it, flinching as icicle chunks reached him and the Hail continued.

"Ice Spikes!"

"Toxic!"

Moriko grimaced as she watched Tarahn limp across the sharp, icy field to vomit up black-purple sludge on the antepard; the other feline was beating him at his own game, filling the arena with hazards and a nasty, powerful weather effect. Well, they were committed, and they'd see who'd drop first.

"Thunderbolt!"

"Nitro Boost!"

_Shit_.

Tarahn stood his ground, the yellow thunderbolt arcing forward and surrounding the antepard with a searing glow, but their flame ripped through it as they charged. The Nitro Boost accelerated them like a bullet, and they rammed Tarahn and sent him flying.

The antepard's spots were elongated and swooping compared to most examples of their species, Moriko now noticed—they had a fleetah minor parent somewhere in their ancestry and had inherited the priority attack from it.

Tarahn was scuttling away further down the field, leaving more Poison Spikes in his wake and wincing under the Hail he couldn't dodge. The antepard looked proud of themself on both faces, despite the Toxic sludge still clinging to them.

"Finish it, Blue," Polaris said finally. "Carnot Cycle."

The antepard's fire-type head rose, and they turned and breathed fire onto their own ice-type side. Amidst their painful yowls, though, it was obvious that the antepard's power had gone way up.

"Tarahn—run!"

"Black Snake!"

It sounded like Tarahn had a few seconds yet before the antepard could Nitro Boost again, but the opponent-seeking Black Snake fireball was sidewinding after him, spewing black smoke.

"Double Team!"

The raigar's outline blurred, but the fireball hit him instead of the illusion anyway, making him screech in pain. Moriko wasn't sure if he was going to outlast the antepard, despite them hurting from their health-sacrificing move. They were cryokinetically scattering the Hail away, the chunks sliding off an invisible barrier.

"Hide, Tarahn!" Moriko called. "Let the Toxic work!"

"That won't save you," Polaris said. "Frostburn!"

The antepard leapt forward, shaking off the paralysis, and erupted into blue flame as Tarahn skittered behind the shelter of a huge ice heave. They charged power a moment and then shot forward, ice chunks flying, and exploded the ice shelf out of its way to expose Tarahn.

The flame-charged tackle hit the raigar full-on and he went flying again, thudding into the ground painfully… and evaporated into yellow smoke.

The antepard was panting hard now, poison-tinged drool seeping from their twin mouths. "What did you… do?" they gasped, and then retched, doubling up on themself. "Where are you!?"

"I fainted, obviously," came Tarahn's voice. "Oh wait!"

Blue snarled and fired off a blue-white Flamethrower that eagerly cut through the heaved ice around the arena, making the bigger pieces sweat and split apart with deafening cracks, and nearly sublimating the smaller shards. A Shock Wave sizzled out from somewhere, seeking out the antepard; Blue turned their attention to the ice it seemed to come from, but they gasped and collapsed, the Toxic a clinging stain on their body. Polaris recalled them.

"Sorry about that. You _did_ destroy my Replica." Tarahn strode out of the confusion of ice shards and loose Hail, and he winked at the gym leader, waving a paw.

Polaris sighed and then laughed. "At _what_ point did you use Replicate? You don't have to tell me, I'll review the match footage later."

"Right at the beginning," Tarahn said, shivering. He was dancing from paw to paw in the freezing water left by Blue's attacks. "And with all this debris it was easy to switch places. Ho ho ho."

Moriko grinned, clapping for Tarahn as he bowed for a nonexistent audience. That was a trick that worked well on wild pokémon, too—but only if there was cover, which the hazard-filled arena had plenty of, even before the antepard had started it Hailing.

"Round two. Select your next pokémon, Polaris," the ref said.

Polaris's next pick was Atropos the hexx, her pale, silvery hair floating behind her.

_Hexx, the snowfall hag pokémon. Evolves from jynx due to age or with a mist stone. An ice- and psychic type. According to folklore, they are born from the spirits of people who perished in blizzards. They will visit dwellings in the winter to ask for water, but obliging or refusing will lead to the victim's death. If given hot tea, they will leave._

"Forfeit! I forfeit," Tarahn said quickly, and darted back into his pokéball.

_Good job, kitty-cat,_ Moriko told him.

Tarahn was hurt, and him limping through another round might just be a free setup turn for the hexx. Better to start fresh.

"Both trainers down a pokémon. Select your next pokémon, Moriko."

Moriko went back and forth, considering, but finally she tossed out Liona's pokéball.

This would be risky—Thana would be better at a distance, and they had to stay away from the hexx's Lovely Kiss, but Liona was better on foot. No one was flying in an ice gym unless they could mitigate the bonus damage or didn't need air-type energy to fly. And the antepard had smoothed out the battlefield somewhat, although there were still chunks of ice and water ponds present.

The nigriff flapped her wings once to limber up but folded them away.

"Pokémon ready? Begin!"

"Double Team, Atropos," Polaris said. "Gonna copy your kitty, Moriko."

This was part of the hexx's usual arsenal—she created a dozen illusory copies, all identical with shadows and softly wafting hair. Moriko whistled.

"Quill Storm, Liona."

Liona kept moving, trying to prevent a copy or two from drifting behind her, her claws slipping here and there on the slick ice. She lunged at the nearest illusion, and when it dodged, she flapped her wings and spun. Silver air-type energy shot out in a circle, dagger-swift, and hit every copy.

All of them reacted identically to the hit, and none of them faded.

"Hm," Moriko said.

"What's the plan, Moriko?" Liona called, firing off a small Shadow Bolt that an advancing hexx copy dodged.

Atropos couldn't affect dark-type Liona psychically, but she could still act on the rest of the arena: ice chunks started to rise, the Hailstones that remained from the earlier round and icicles that the antepard had brought down, and rotated to face the nigriff pointy-end-first.

Liona charged another of the illusions, aiming broad slashes to catch those nearby too, but all three were copies, and Atropos backed off all twelve, splitting into two rings of six to mix them up again. It was elegant, like a dance, and Moriko rapidly lost track of the ones Liona had already hit. Ice chunks began whizzing in toward her, and the nigriff reared up on her hind legs to slash them away with fighting-type energy. The exploded chunks rained down on the hexx illusions and pattered to the ground as if they were all solid.

"Gods all dammit."

"Moriko!"

The nigriff wasn't the most confident battler, still, looking to Moriko for guidance, and she wasn't allowed to fly. This was hard on her.

The copies were flawless, so no help there—they didn't disappear when struck—AOE attacks offered no clue—the hexx could attack from range—how could they find the real one? Atropos would just wear Liona down, at this rate.

She had to stop the hexx from hitting Liona, then.

"Deep Darkness!"

"Soul Tether!" Polaris replied quickly.

An inky blackness spilled out of Liona's drooped wings; she flinched a little under the rays of ghost-type energy that shot out from every hexx's hand, but the darkness grew. Finally she flapped her wings and the arena was filled as if with a dense smoke. The arena shielding buzzed stronger, containing it, and Moriko and Polaris were facing a dark dome.

The referee knew what was going on, at least, and Liona could see with her darkvision, but Moriko couldn't see shit.

_Not the best time for this, but_—

Moriko cast her awareness forward, diving into the arena, the air suffused with minute particles of dark-type energy. Yeah, she couldn't sense shit either.

_Can you see her, Liona?_

Silver streaked across Moriko's energy senses as Liona tried another Quill Storm.

_Gah! They're still here and they're all the same, Moriko!_

Gods, the training to get Double Team this good. Atropos had to have been doing this for decades.

_Try again, she can't do this forever._

_Yeah, well, neither can I,_ Liona mentally muttered, but she tried the area-of-effect attack again.

"You might as well drop the Deep Darkness if you're going to think this loud," Atropos purred somewhere in the murk. "Look out!"

A sphere of ice loomed out of the dark and exploded—Frostbomb. Moriko swore, her concentration breaking—and the darkness effect disappeared. Liona was frozen, encased in ice.

"Shit!"

"Oh, hello again," Polaris called. "Ooh, too bad. Ice Beam at your leisure, Tropo."

_Moriko! I can't do this!_

Moriko grabbed Liona's pokéball. An immobilized pokémon needed to get off the field, unless—

_You can—Bulk Up! A lot!_

Atropos was drawing in ice-type energy, charging the beam—all the copies were. Heartbeat to heartbeat, Moriko raised Liona's pokéball; a full-hit, full-power attack would be the end of the match. She watched the copies. Felt them.

Ice flew away as Liona's body glowed crimson, and she threw herself sideways as the ponderous, crackling beam came for her from twelve sources.

_Liona—the one at 3 o'clock!_

The nigriff pivoted, changing direction on a dime and leaping at that hexx. The Ice Beam passed over her and she screeched, but she kept running, rimed with frost, and aimed a Close Combat at the copy.

It connected, sending the hexx flying as her copies winked out at last.

Moriko exhaled heavily. _Holy shit_. Adeptry saved the day—how would you _deal_ with that as a normal trainer? Stronger AOEs, she supposed.

Close Combat had to be devastating for the hexx, but Liona wasn't doing well either, covered in frost and her feet in the painfully cold water. Liona was shivering, little pulses of energy leaving her through the Soul Tether, and—ugh. Atropos had hit her with a damage-over-time move at the instant they'd contacted, Ice Lice—there were tiny white snowflakes crawling over Liona, freezing and hardening where they touched.

_How are you doing, Liona?_

The nigriff shook herself. _Let's end it. I'm ready!_

Moriko smiled. She was trying, despite the horrible matchup. Lots of pokémon would have given up before now.

"Perish Song, Atropos."

Moriko covered her ears, knowing it would do nothing—the eerie notes sounded in her teeth and skull bones somehow, and Liona flinched visibly.

"Finish her off, Liona!"

The nigriff leapt forward, aiming a Night Slash at the hexx, but the dark-type energy bounced off a Protect shield. As Liona came around to try again, Atropos used Psychic to propel herself across the arena and away. The hexx perched on top of a rock in the middle of one of the ponds and smiled at Liona, her hair wafting around her gracefully as she extended her hands for another Ice Beam.

_Fuck_. Drawing it out. The sawing notes of the Perish Song were getting louder and louder.

"Shadow Ball! Twist it!"

Liona opened her beak, charging up the purple energy orb in her mouth, and for a moment the icy arena glittered blue and violet between the two attacks.

Liona fired off the ball and it missed. Atropos teleported forward, still charging the Ice Beam, and raised her hands to loose it.

For a moment the hexx was haloed in shadowy light as the Shadow Ball curved around behind her. The special-based attack held no momentum, striking her in the back and making her body arc, dark eyes wide, hands separating and losing cohesion on her prepared Ice Beam.

Atropos staggered, slumping to the ground, her hair falling limp.

"Enough," she breathed. "Enough!"

Polaris recalled her.

Moriko exhaled, letting go of the iron railing on her trainer box. Close. A close one. The hexx's Ice Lice were gone, but the Perish Song wasn't, just briefly silent and waiting for Polaris's next pokémon to close the circuit on the sound-type attack.

Liona was nearly done herself. It would be right to recall her—she'd only have moments to act once Polaris's next choice was out, between the waiting notes of the Song and the fact that she could probably get taken out by a firm handshake at this point.

"Want to switch, Lio?"

"I want a rest," the nigriff sighed, shaking with cold and the Song's reverberations. "Let me get a proper hit on someone before I leave."

Polaris threw down an aurora ball, revealing an ursabre, a white bipedal bear with rimed armor and a huge greatsword.

_Ursabre, the polar pokémon. Evolves from kodiaxe near level 55. An ice- and steel-type, they are master sword users. Their blades are made of a mysterious substance with the sharpness of ice and the resilience of steel._

At the referee's shout, Liona Close Combatted right into the ursabre's Protect shield, bouncing off and skidding away on her belly on the ice.

The ursabre shouldered his sword, looking down at her. "Whoops," he said.

The nigriff slumped. "I'm done. I hate this arena," she said, as Moriko recalled her.

_Well done, big bird._

An answering warmness from Liona, but she needed her rest.

Last one.

Moriko threw down Rufus's pokéball. His tail lashed as he laid eyes on the ursabre, the ice around him melting as the temperature rose, and he shifted into the battle stance Ganny the emboar had taught him.

The ursabre grinned, raising a hand in a "bring it!" gesture.

Moriko tossed Ganny's pokéball onto the trainer box floor and was instantly crowded by the emboar, but she laughed and pushed him into a corner.

"Show old Ganny what you learned, boy!" he called to Rufus.

"Let's do something a little naughty for the last one," Polaris said, winking at Moriko. "Major, mega plus."

The mega focus blazed in Polaris's hand while the ursabre erupted in iridescent light, his form shifting and growing. When it cleared, the ursabre's armor had closed over his entire body, and his sword was replaced with a pair of forearm blades.

_Mega Ursabre (+), the polar pokémon. A steel-type, its mega evolution sacrifices its cold resistance to put all of its strength into its armor and weapons. Even ultra-hard and ultra-tough alloys will fall prey to its swords._

Moriko swore. Mega ursabre plus's ability was Filter, and it lost its ice type—quite a bit less of a slam dunk for a fire-type opponent. And it was a clear invitation for her to get Rufus to mega evolve.

She looked down at Rufus, who was watching her, and felt his apprehension.

Nope. They'd do without.

"Well well," Major called. "I do love beating starter pokémon."

Rufus slapped his armored chest with a clang, an invitation.

They did have another trick, of course.

Moriko focused and tossed Rufus that mental cable to her energy, and his fire turned spring-green. She smiled, despite everything, and Polaris golf-clapped across the arena.

_Are you ready?_

_Ready._

"Let's do this. Flare Blitz, Ru."

"Earthquake!"

Rufus was fire/steel; of course it was Earthquake. Major grinned under his biosteel helm and raised one foot, driving it through the ice in a shower of shards through to the rock below. The force burst out of the ground, a huge peak after that deep trough, and ice and water exploded away to either side as it came for Rufus like a train.

Rufus braced for it and stumbled as the wave of ground-type energy passed over him, one knee hitting the ground. He recovered, his fire turning green and then blue, charging forward and slamming into the ursabre in a burst of fire.

The ursabre riposted with a Sacred Sword technique, his swords scything over Rufus's armor. He Countered in response, his body glowing as it intercepted the red-brown slashes of fighting-type energy, and then flexed, the sword slashes reversing, hurled back at Major. Invisible swords hit his armor, drawing out deep bell tones from the metal.

The ursabre threw himself backward, shaking out his arms after the mirrored assault, but after a heartbeat he was crouched and ready again, blades up. He and Rufus circled one another.

The carefully set up arena and all its hazards were destroyed after that fire and earth exchange: Rufus had found his footing in the rock and sand thrown up by the Earthquake and melted a huge swath in the ice that was left.

"That's a pretty trick," Major said to Rufus. "Never seen an oxhaust with green fire, not even a shiny. Afraid to mega evolve? Can't?"

The ursabre was a talker—Moriko had always found that weird, or maybe the battle replays had usually omitted it.

"Ach, cocky. He would not be so in Ganny's class," the emboar commented behind Moriko.

"Ignore him, Ru. Fire Punch!"

"Earthquake, May."

Another raised paw and explosion of sand and stones. Moriko hissed, watching the ground-type move take a huge chunk out of the oxhaust's energy readout—but he fought on, fists glowing as he delivered the burning punches, Major snarling as Rufus got past his guard. He was calm, stolid, using attacks as Moriko commanded them, Major's taunts passing over him unheeded.

Rufus was strong, he had a type advantage, and he was using his own type—but Major was iridescent under the mega evolution, energy streaming in from his trainer, and perhaps doubly so since Polaris was an adept. Their only reprieve was that the ursabre wasn't using Earthquake at full power, which would mean too much collateral damage to the gym. But the double weakness was a lot. They had to end this quickly.

Could she give him more energy? She tried to imagine opening their connection, widening it, and she suppressed a cheer as Rufus's flames grew brighter.

"Flare Blitz again, Ru!"

The recoil was dangerous—Moriko watched Rufus's head snap back, his pipes belching smoke, and the ursabre slashed at him again—but the power was needed. At last Major's remaining energy was more in line with Rufus's. If they could just keep this up—

If—

If she—

She—

She started to feel… funny.

The arena jittered; Moriko studied Major, but he hadn't started another Earthquake attack. Images intruded on her mind, distracting her, like she'd just watched an incredible movie or an upsetting one and couldn't wait to talk about it. She couldn't concentrate. Everything was wiggling, leaving faint outlines of color. Her mind jabbered, gabbled, songs and annoying, meaningless phrases repeating.

_Moriko…?_

She felt dizzy, leaning on the trainer box railing for support, and she realized that Rufus's flames were flickering, losing the green glow from the feed of her energy.

She tried to concentrate, to open the connection, and the vertigo just got stronger. Rufus even looked back at her for a moment before blocking another hit from the mega ursabre and countering with a Flamethrower at close range. The two of them pushed at one another, hooves and paws wearing deep grooves in the sand.

What—what was—

_Moriko… _Vleridin said to her. _Who is doing this?_

She looked at Polaris, who was grinning at her.

Her stomach fell, fear sweat prickling on her forehead.

Enemy adepts could attack one another.

She hit back at him and hit nothing; it went wide, skittered harmlessly over the shell of ice that was his mental defenses.

He sent her a memory: it was vivid, the smell of snow in the air, and the taste of grit in her mouth as the older boys shoved her to the ground and laughed.

Moriko spat, gripping the trainer box railing until her hands hurt; the real pain cut through the gym leader's remembered hurt and hate.

She raised her head and grinned back. _Oh, are we trading traumas?_

She had some that were too bad to share. She selected a horrible one of her aunt having a tantrum, filling it with helplessness and rage and frustration and fear, and she lobbed it at him. The suffocating attack immediately let up, and Rufus's flames—

—stayed orange. She was shaken.

_I'm sorry, Ru._

_You're here,_ he said. _I'm glad._

_I'll never leave! That's a promise!_

She felt his joy, despite everything—it was so good to battle, so good to learn, so good to face a strong opponent, win or lose.

Still. It wasn't fair—after what they'd been through—

But she looked at Rufus's flagging energy on the readout above the arena, and she realized that the adeptry, like Flare Blitz, had a recoil. He felt the spiritual attack too, and she'd done nothing to shield him—and then she'd fought back, her blows going wide, splash damage coming for him. But Major looked fine—Polaris knew what he was doing. She didn't.

She had a long way to go. They wouldn't fix it all in the middle of a battle. There would be other opportunities—

Or. No. There wouldn't.

Not if Rufus didn't want to stay.

…One problem at a time.

She was the pool—"Rufus, use Flare Blitz!"—she was the earth—"Rufus, Hammer Arm as it comes in!"—she was the forest, growing, roots extending with glacial slowness.

And—

Rufus caught her root, and together they blazed.

She'd failed before and she would fail again, many times. What was important was that they were here, and they were together.

She might fail, but she'd be damned if she wasn't going to give this fight all she had.

Or, almost all. She didn't quite jump in, but she wasn't obeying Polaris's rules, either.

Rufus-Moriko's flames burned green, and their eyes glinted orange. Now. All their power. None of the delay.

They Shoulder Rushed at Major, feinting with a Fire Punch that skittered along the mega ursabre's swords while the Hammer Arm followed up from below. With every attack their bellows-breath worked, armored slats falling open to let more air into the furnace. They slammed their head into the ursabre's, knocking him back, and followed up with another Fire Punch into his belly, driving him back, his paws furrowing the arena.

And Major raised his head, snarling with Bearserker Rage, and stabbed his swords right into Rufus-Moriko's poorly-armored neck.

Almost.

Moriko had to break off, gasping in the trainer box as Ganny stopped her from falling. Rufus held the blades a finger, a hair away from himself. He was trembling with the effort as the ursabre forced him down, gaining the advantage of gravity.

"I'm stronger than you, oxhaust," Major growled. "Your trick is nothing to a Mega. You know how this is going to end."

Rufus grunted, the ursabre's blades coming for him. "This is steel," he said slowly, looking at the nearer sword. "I know steel," he said, and let go, the ursabre surging forward and the blades biting at last. He grabbed at his opponent's sword near the hilt—

"Rufus!"

—and broke it off the ursabre's arm.

Major howled, gray fluid fountaining out of the broken metal and evaporating into lightmotes. He shuffled backward, groaning, and then shook himself, readying the remaining sword, pointing his injured side away from his opponent. Well-trained.

The broken-off blade was trying to dissipate, too, but Rufus was maintaining it somehow. He advanced on Major, dragging it along the ice, blood running down his armor.

This dramatic flair? Rufus wouldn't do that. That was her, lingering. Moriko clutched at herself, still feeling eight feet tall, still feeling the fire in her veins, hand clamped at her neck where she was sure she was bleeding.

"H-how did you do that?" the ursabre gasped. He was shuffling backward, arrogance broken.

"There was a weak spot there. I could feel it," Rufus said. He flicked the blade with one huge fingernail. "Steel like that needs to go back in the smelter."

"Time out!" Polaris looked shaken. "Was that a foul?" he asked the referee.

The ref was checking the energy sensors. "Major has some damage to his energy skeleton, but he isn't crippled. That's a warning, Trainer Moriko, and Battler Rufus. Do you want to continue, Major?"

The ursabre nodded, teeth bared as he stared at the oxhaust. "Let's finish this," he growled. Stones and broken ice shuddered at his feet as he charged up another Earthquake, crouched, desperate, not the easy confidence of the beginning of the battle.

Rufus inhaled, holding the broken sword in his hands, and shifted his stance so that he was holding it in front of one shoulder.

The Flame Charge exploded him forward, blue fire streaming from the vents on his back, and the broken sword clashed noisily with the ursabre's whole one—until Major screamed as Rufus put a blue-burning hand to his neck. The broken sword fell and evaporated, forgotten, as Rufus grabbed Major, pulling him close by a ridge in his armor, while the other hand melted through his chest plate.

The ursabre's fists clanged, denting Rufus's steel plates and tubes, the huge hits growing more and more desperate and panicked.

"Get off me! Get off!" Major howled, blows slowing.

"Enough, Ru!" Moriko shouted. "He's done!"

Rufus let him fall to the arena floor. A shimmer, a little burst of light, and his mega transformation fell away. The wound on the ursabre's chest was a mass of slag, seeping water and gray fluid. Major's reformed greatsword slid out of his claws with a whisper on the ice.

"Huh," Major gasped, looking up at Rufus and heaving. "Neat trick."

Polaris recalled him.

"Polaris has no more pokémon that can battle. The match goes to Trainer Moriko."

Loud claps echoed through the arena as Polaris applauded.

Moriko let out a long, long breath.

"You taught him Blowtorch, huh?" she muttered to Ganny.

"Wasn't sure if he got it," the emboar said proudly. "He is a good boy. He works hard." He looked carefully at Moriko. "Can you…?"

"I can," Moriko said, teeth gritted. Her legs trembled as she descended from the trainer box, carefully putting her boots on each ladder rung.

She and Ganny joined Rufus on the arena floor, boots and hooves crunching. Polaris came down as well; he shook hands with Moriko and Rufus, and handed Moriko the Frost Badge with its six points and engraving of the waterfall above the town.

"I tested you, both of you, and you did well," Polaris said finally. "But I beg you to consider the warnings I've given you. This was a safe environment, and I could have been… ruder."

"I have _ruder_ memories than that," Moriko couldn't help saying. But she shook her head, apologetic, at the troubled look on the gym leader's face.

Polaris raised his hands. "Just promise me you'll work on your mental defenses when you go back to Hoenn."

She nodded. "I will. I promise."

Ganny was patting Rufus on the arm, wordless, but they looked happy. Rufus looked happy and tired; his aura was well into the red, and he was bleeding, breathing hard.

"Great job, Ru," Moriko told him.

Rufus stuck his chin out, looking down at her. "I learned something at the mill, too," he said.

"That was amazing!" She hesitated. "How was it? Sharing energy? It wasn't the same, as…"

The oxhaust nodded slowly. "It was okay. It's different. Not as bad as before. You're… fast. You do a lot, fast. It makes me tired." He stretched his arms, shaking out the stiffness. "You were really mad."

"You make him fast," Polaris said quietly, "but you make him cruel, too." He was looking at the penalty screen where a diagram of Major's energy skeleton—deeper injury, beyond the drain of the pokémon's aura—showed damage in red, damage that would be a longer time healing. If Moriko had racked up another penalty the ref could have ruled it a draw.

"I—"

"Another reason to train," Polaris said. "Keep your hurt and your id on this side. Mental hygiene and mental defenses. Okay?"

Moriko sighed. "I get it. I'll train."

Polaris smiled and clapped her on the shoulder. "Come back when you have for a couple of years—I'll show you how we adepts fight at S-tier."

x.x.x.x.x

Tarahn, Liona, and Rufus all went through the quick healing at the pokémon center. No skeleton damage to them. Moriko let them, Thana, and Vleridin out in the exercise yard, chilly as it was.

"Ru you were so good!" Tarahn said, rubbing up against Rufus's legs excitedly. "You were all like 'Watch this' and then bam! Pow!" He stood on his hind legs, swiping his forelegs to mime punches. "So? Are you staying? Are you coming back with us?"

Moriko felt like she was choking.

Rufus sighed and sat on his hooves. He petted Tarahn absently.

"It's up to you," Moriko babbled in the silence. "You have friends back at the steel mill and there was a lot of energy there. And I love you a lot and Tarahn does too. It's up to you. You'll get powerful either way. I support you either—"

Rufus reached out to her, in that energy space beyond matter, and she took his hand.

There was pain in battling, yes, but she felt his remembered joy, the thrill of the battle, energy and power suffusing the two of them. Neither loss nor victory mattered when battle was greater than both.

She would not taint that joy with hate or ego. She swore it.

"I want to go to school too," Rufus said, and Moriko's heart felt like it was about to burst. "Can I come with you?"

"Yes! Yes of course!"

Tarahn flopped on Rufus, purring ecstatically.

"I want to learn," Rufus said, in between Tarahn rubbing his cheeks on his armor. "I want to battle again. Real battles."

"It'll be great! You'll learn so much from the pokémon teachers! And we'll practice together often, it won't be like how it was—"

"And I don't have to read books?" Rufus said hopefully.

Moriko caught her breath, smiling at him. "No books."

"Good." He brought his armored fists together with a clang. "Books are too hard."

x.x.x.x.x

Moriko went to the waterfront to bid farewell to a demon.

The sky was leaden over a wine-dark sea. Snow was falling, though not fat flakes—it was half-formed crystals, needles falling like tiny daggers to disappear on the water's surface.

The auroraboros was in its customary place, heaped on an outcrop of rock on the seashore, head pointed out toward the water.

"Did you prevail against the clan-priest?" Karaxil, Demon of Frost and Starlight, asked.

"I did. Eight badges, so I'm a senior trainer. Did you… prevail against the Empress?"

Dark amusement rolled off the demon. "Oh, I was no match for it. It toyed with me for some time and then left all at once without a word." It shifted uncomfortably. "I must confess… when first I saw it I was relieved. Here were allies, I thought; here I could leave the dominion of humans. But it was all the same as it ever was; it was all the same foolish quest as centuries gone. Imprisoned, I learned more than they, scheming endlessly to repeat all the mistakes of the past."

"So, you were all ready to go back to your old life?" Moriko couldn't help challenging it. "Are you sure you learned something?"

It laughed. "It is not _so_ easy to change one's nature, Adept Moriko. But one may try." It cast its multi-eyed gaze down on her. "_You_ may yet change. Your elementals get your power, but your anger, too, fills them. There are those that might steal your energy through them, or their energy through you."

She coughed. "Touché."

"Let me teach _you_ something, human," Karaxil said suddenly. "I am going to steal your energy."

"Um," Moriko said.

"Watch me, though not with your eyes," the demon said.

Moriko felt it, very slowly, extend a tendril of—something, in that shadow world, that pale reflective space where pokémon traded energy. But where attacks were bright and blinding, and Rufus's outflung energy hand an invitation, the demon's hand was… a demand. It was a hand holding a knife, a gun; it was a hand on a child or pet, and it was a threat. The vilest of threats.

Moriko's whole body arced away from it, and she felt all her pokémon react, especially Vleridin.

Karaxil closed its demon's hand, hid the knife.

"That was…"

"That is the vampire's touch," Karaxil said, arranging its claws more comfortably on the rock. "That is the means by which many of us take human energy. Your next opponent will not be so slow nor obvious, but perhaps it is enough if you have seen once that which you will look for. And there are other ways to feed."

"L-like what?"

Karaxil bared its teeth. "The cannibal eats flesh and gains energy thereby. Their attack is more… _direct_. The other is the nightmare: it will not touch you at all. It requires only your emotion."

"You can feed off of… what, happiness?"

"Joy is fleeting. Sorrow lies deep in the gullies of the heart; this, you can live on. Or hate, which bites deep. Or rage, deepest and reddest of all."

_The Spirit of Wrath._

"Which one are you?" Moriko asked it, absently.

"Lesser demons may only be capable of one or the other, while those greater are capable of any. But the way of the nightmare was mine by custom. And I drank worship."

Moriko looked at it sidelong. "Do you need to be worshipped?"

Its claws scraped the stone, pensive. "The race of humans has created new ways of living. I experiment with them now. If not… there is time. For now I prefer to do as humans ask, and live comfortably."

"Wouldn't that be nice, if the other demons did that too. Could you tell them to?"

It hissed softly. "No."

"Why not?"

"I do not know. They do not understand. I did not understand. I thought I could it explain to them; perhaps they do not believe me. We are not inclined to trust."

It turned its black eyes on Moriko. "Your… friend. The pale one. She was there that day I awoke again at last. Who is she?"

"That was Linden. She… seemed different to you?"

"What is her power?"

Moriko wasn't sure if she should answer, but she did. "She's a demon master. Or, they say she is. Her energy can't be taken by demons."

Karaxil said nothing for so long that Moriko thought the demon pokémon had gone to sleep.

"Tell her, Moriko…" it said, "tell her that a crown makes a demon of any who wear it."

Moriko thought uneasily about what the whitikhan had said to her, about humans and their need to control.

"We only allow things to exist that can't threaten us," Moriko said. "Is that true?"

"It is certain," Karaxil said. "You have put elementals in your service; you have put gods' servants in your service; even now you work to tame demons. Those that will not serve, you will destroy. And thus I serve. There are worse fates."

"Why? Why do this? Why let us? Why go along with this?"

"Time all things upends," the demon said. "One day this shall all be waste, and humans will long be gone, but I shall remain in the dark and the stillness. I need only be patient."

x.x.x.x.x

**A/N:** Thanks for reading! This was my first-ever beta'd chapter (lol) after some friends at PokeCharms expressed an interest in critiquing the gym battle. It's perhaps a bit tell-y instead of show-y but I want to get this one out the door and move on to the next thing. I was hoping to get some art done as well but I am Two Tired and don't like what I started, so. Maybe later. ;)


	5. Time All Things Upends

Epilogue: Time All Things Upends

_Sometimes humans just die. And you cannot save them.  
Sometimes humans do not die, and you cannot save them.  
—Natalie Young_

_Later_

Moriko sat at the table with her back to the café entrance. She only saw the sea.

Again she wondered if this was a good idea.

Probably not, but she'd live either way.

_I shall not pretend to know wisdom in this matter_, Vleridin told her, _but if she speaks falsely or cruelly, you need only say the word and I will bite off her nose or fingers_.

Moriko laughed. She had her pokédex out so she wouldn't seem unstable, laughing at nothing. The server had brought her a hard cider that she'd drained in a few swallows, and she made herself drink the second one more slowly.

The sunset was beautiful, turning the ocean into a river of fire, and dolphins leapt far away in the surf. One last night before her life started again. She hoped the rest of it would have no more fucking demons.

Hey, she could hope.

She caught sight of a familiar silhouette as Angela circled the café tables, looking for her; Moriko stood as she approached.

"Hi, Moriko," Angela said. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear like she always did. She smiled, nervously.

The movies said that she should hug her dramatically, have a grand reconciliation to fix everything.

You couldn't build on sand. You had to build, slowly, on rock. Maybe it would never be enough. But she could try.

"Hi, Angela," Moriko said. "Thanks for coming."

x.x.x.x.x

_Yesterday_

The ocean went from azure to blue to indigo as the gray man swam down and down, until the water was like ink and the sun just a memory.

The pressure was excruciating; he was caught in a vise, in the earth, in the center of a star. He would not drown, but would be crushed to death by water.

No, drowning was beyond him now, or death by pressure, or guns, or bombs, or orbital lasers; he was in the master's hands, and the master required his pain, only. He had endured much for it, and had always been rewarded.

Strange lights flickered here and there in the deepest dark; weird creatures flitted through the crushing pressure, defying description. A pattern twinkling like a distant constellation suggested a tibyss. They went to die here, at the bottom of the sea.

The gray man seemed to swim for an aeon, down and down and down. Perhaps he was travelling to the past, or to a pocket of old time held deep underneath the sea, where the world was new and still held a place for titans.

At last he slowed, hovering over the silt at the bottom of the ocean. He let his mind wander through the darkness that no eye could pierce; the landscape was uneven, shaped into hills and drumlins with distant mountains beyond. There were vents in places, where the heat of the earth bubbled out and boiled the ocean. Warmth and sulfur, fire and brimstone, giving life where light had never reached.

Nothing lived here, on this cold, barren plain—or at least not for long.

Below them, millions of years' worth, were the dead.

He kneeled in the silt and sent, as strongly as he could:

_Hail, lord. I wish an audience. I speak for the master._

The thought would go a long way, he knew, and could awaken something unintended. He grinned there in the inky, crushing water. He hoped so.

But no reply came for long minutes, the silence total aside from the gray man's own pulse in his ears and the straining of his bones under the equal and opposite hands of the ocean and the master.

_The Lord of Currents is capricious_, the master whispered to him. _It will test me, defy me. So!_

At that moment there came a noise, too low to hear with the ears but felt in the bones and teeth, a groan from the earth itself. The hills shifted out in the dark, falling flat and reappearing elsewhere.

The noise went on and on until he wondered if the earth was about to rend apart, boiling water about to erupt where it touched the blood of the world.

Then an eye opened in front of him, an eye the width of a street. Silt and grime encrusted it. Red light streamed out of the iris, which glowed and swirled like molten metal; the cross-shaped pupil was a window into an abyss.

A thought came, a single word, and the force of it would have destroyed him if not for the master's protection.

**_SPEAK._**

x.x.x.x.x

_Tomorrow_

The whitikhan lay alone in the capture ball for—it couldn't say how long; the ball's walls were opaque, shadowed, but for confused sensations vaguely transmitted from the other side.

All at once it felt a presence, a human presence, though not the soft, easily-plucked auras it was used to. This one was tall, rigid, strong, as sharp as a claw and burning with might.

It was a demon master's aura, and the whitikhan longed to be protected, as once the Night's Empress had protected it, as once it had served Ituras, whose strength had stood between it and ruin.

The walls opened, and the whitikhan reformed on concrete strung with wires—some human trap—and it waited for the demon master to appear.

"Who are you?" the master asked it.

"_I am hunger. I am thirst. I can lie on the ice a hundred nights and not freeze. I can drink a river of blood and not burst. Show me your enemies._"

Linden grinned.

x.x.x.x.x

**A/N:** :) _So Comes Ice After Fire_ will be followed by _Gods and Demons II: Among the Exiles_. Thanks for reading!


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